


Die Hard the Hunter

by Leanansidhe363



Category: Supernatural, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/M, M/M, Not a Twilight fan, Not exactly flattering Twilight, Sexual Content, Snark, This story just sort of rooted itself in my head, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Urban Fantasy, rated for eventual genre-typical voilence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2018-02-17 01:03:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 49,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2291261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leanansidhe363/pseuds/Leanansidhe363
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victoria wants everyone dead, the wolves and the vampires are about one undercooked steak from civil war, and Bella Swan is increasingly less certain of the immortal fate she thought she wanted.<br/>Bodies are popping up all over Seattle, teenagers are being snatched from the city streets, and two young hunters are forced to confront a tremendous loss in their pasts that could change the fate of a whole town forever.</p><p>In the middle of the chaos, Bella starts having dreams of another life; a life full of monsters that make Victoria look like a Scooby-Doo villain, of guns and magic and an unlikely family that was soaked in blood and bonded with something so much thicker. </p><p>Bella has to face that she might not be who she thinks she is, Charlie might not be who he says he is, and forever might not be all it’s cracked up to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Not Beta'd, all mistakes are mine. The timeline is a bit wonky: The story is set in book 3 of Twilight and season 2 of Supernatural. Dean is 27, Sam is 23, Bella is 18 and Jake is 16. But Bella is actually a year younger than Dean and Jake is a year older than Sam. That will be explained as the story progresses. Bear with me. 
> 
> If you're a huge Twilight fan, this is probably not the story for you. I'm a little irreverent about Twilight and I was never a fan. 
> 
> As far as the writing goes, I tried to mix my person style of writing with SMeyer's style and match the tone of Supernatural. Bella goes back and forth on a sliding scale of SPN to Twilight and I try to convey through the writing style when she is more one than the other. I hope I did a good job.  
> With that, I hope you enjoy reading, updates will be irregular but they will happen.

_Carry on my wayward son,_

_There’ll be peace when you are done_

_Lay your weary head to rest_

_Don’t you cry no more._

-Kansas

 

            A black 1967 Chevy Impala sped west from Ohio, growling down the road at eighty miles an hour. The driver and passenger, two brothers on a never-ending journey across the continental United States, were arguing over their next location.

            “There have already been five killings in Seattle,” the passenger said, “no one’s doing jack to stop it. How many more people have to die before we investigate?”

            “Charlie will call someone to check it out,” the driver replied, wanting nothing more than to drop the damn subject, “There’s probably a hunter on their way right now to take out the nest.”

            “This isn’t just about the nest, man.” His brother’s voice was soft in his ear as his grip on the steering wheel tightened, “You’ve gotta face this.”

            “I don’t have to face a damn thing,” the driver snapped. He wasn’t going to talk about this. Ever. It was one of a top three in the long, long list of things he was never, ever going to talk about.

            “They were my friends, too, Dean. And they died. Jake was like a brother to us and Issy…”

            “Don’t, Sammy.” Dean just about choked on the words; the sound of her name was like pouring acid in a gaping wound. It hurt and Dean just couldn’t face it. “Just, don’t.”

            “Look, Dean,” Sam sighed with that I-acknowledge-your-pain pout, “Dad’s dead, the demon is in the wind, and we don’t have a clue where to start looking. We owe it to Charlie to help out and we owe it to Issy and Jake to make sure he’s okay.”

            Issy Swan and Jake Black had been friends of the Winchesters since Dean and Sam were kids. Practically their whole lives, they had been together. Dean didn’t know how his brother could even bear to say their names.

            Jake’s absence left a hole in their lives that was impossible to ignore, but it was Issy who tore the older brother apart. Her death was not something he would ever really recover from. Nor was it something he would ever be forgiving of.

            He was not going to forgive Charlie, who should have been paying more attention. He was not going to forgive Jake, who should have saved her instead of getting himself killed trying and making the pain twice as sharp. Most of all, he was not ever going to forgive himself, who should have fucking _been there_ instead of hunting a Rugaru in Indiana. 

            “Charlie lives in Forks, right?” Sam pressed, his mouth set in a stubborn line, “We could just pop in and ask him if he’s heard anything. Dude, he was like an uncle to us. We owe him. And I kind of… I mean, I wanna know he’s okay. Don’t you?”

            Dean rubbed a hand over his face, “Yeah, of course I do. Dude’s probably still a mess. But he might not wanna see us. He quit hunting, Sam. Bobby said he put all of that behind him. I don’t want to stir up trouble for the guy. He’s been through enough.”

            “Look, we’ll just keep an eye on the situation in Seattle and if any more bodies show up in the next week, we’ll go see Charlie. Okay?”

            Dean glanced over at his younger brother whose eyes were earnest and pleading. Sam had been every bit as close to Jake and Issy as he had and maybe Sam wasn’t just talking about Dean when he talked about closure. Maybe Sam needed to face it, too.

A week, then. They’d monitor the Seattle vampire situation for a week. Fine.

            “Alright. But if it looks like it’s been handled in the next few days, we are finding a case on the opposite damn coast.”

            Sam smiled humorlessly, “deal.”

***

 

            I’ve thought about how I’ll die. Everyone in our work does. I always assumed I’d die bloody, and it was fine by me. I’d go down fighting, exactly how I was meant to.

I didn’t really care how I died, so long as it was with blood on my knuckles, a gun in my hand, and the thing that got me lying at my feet.

            I’d considered demons and ghosts and werewolves and revenants. I’d assumed a quick and painful death following a short and painful life. And I was at peace with that. Well, no. I was at peace with that when I was staring at it from the bottom of a bottle. But I’d accepted it.

            What I got was a slow death, almost painless, at the hands of the one person I loved most in this world.  What I got was betrayed by the person I trusted with more than just my life.

            I stared across the dark room into the eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me. Even standing at the mouth of the abyss, I couldn’t be angry about the betrayal. It was exactly what I might have done to protect this strange, blood-soaked group of people who had become my family.

            The people I loved.


	2. Questions

_And the queen of the dream_

_She stands before them all_

_She stretches out her hand_

_As the curtain starts to fall_

-Def Leppard

 

            In my dream, I was with Jacob. And I was happy.

            “Come on then, Teen Wolf,” I smirked as we sat at opposite sides of a scratched but sturdy table made of thick, dark wood, “let’s see ‘em.”

            Jacob Black, in my dream, was a lithe boy of fifteen with his shoulder-length black hair tied back in a low pony-tail and a steel stud poked through his right earlobe. His hands were calloused and battle scarred and cradling five playing cards. He grinned wolfishly and laid his hand of poker down between us.

            A royal flush, in diamonds, aided by the ace he’d stuck up his sleeve far too fast for anyone who wasn’t looking for it to see. Jake was becoming a hell of a card hustler, better than me and that was saying something.

            His royal flush beat my three of a kind and I grimaced as he relieved me of one of my favored butterfly knives. Jake laughed then, twirling the blade in his capable fingers and taking a swig of the cheap beer I’d procured with a fake ID. Dad and Billy had dumped us in this two-bed motel room in Oregon a week before and told us to wait until John and the boys picked us up while they investigated a string of killings a state over.

            It was a familiar routine; whenever the summer was ending and the school year hovered over our heads like the friggin’ sword of Damocles, Billy and Jake and Charlie and I would make our way from wherever we were in the continental United States and meet up somewhere in the middle.

            Dad and Billy would track down a case together and Jake and I would hang out for a few weeks in some motel or rented house. It was their way of giving us some small measure of childhood. Considering all the horror and worry and monsters that made up the majority of our young lives, it was the highlight of the year. The idea of having the boys joining us was enough to have me and my de facto baby brother sharing excited little smiles from across the table as we whittled down the hours until our box car family was together again.

            I took a sip of my own beer and scooped the playing cards into my hands. I shuffled with dexterous flicks of the wrists and fingers as I arched an eyebrow at the younger boy.

            “Alright, bitch,” I flung cards face-down across the table, “let’s see how good you can cheat at Texas Hold ‘Em.”

***

            _Bella,_

_~~I don’t know why you’re making Charlie carry notes to Billy like we’re in second grade. If I wanted to talk to you, I would answer the~~_

_~~You made the choice here, okay? You can’t have it both ways when~~_

_~~What part of “mortal enemies” did you not~~_

_~~Look, I know I’m being a jerk, but there’s just no way around~~_

_~~We can’t be friends when you’re spending all your time with a bunch of~~_

_~~It just makes it worse when I think about you too much, so don’t write anymore~~_

_Yeah, I miss you, too. A lot. It doesn’t change anything. Sorry._

_Jacob_

            Jacob’s hastily scrawled and oft-scribbled out note burned in my back pocket as I did my level best to salvage Charlie’s vaguely terrifying attempt at spaghetti. How does a guy who lived on his own for the better part of sixteen years not know that tinfoil can’t go in the microwave?

Not for the first time, I wondered if Charlie exaggerated how inept he was in the kitchen. What bachelor doesn’t know how to boil noodles? Really.

Charlie, my thirty-seven-year-old father was the Sheriff of our little rain-soaked town of Forks, Washington. I’d inherited the bulk of my features from him; we shared dark hair and pale skin and hazel eyes on a narrow face. I’d gotten my mother’s thick lips, but the way they were turned down and serious was all Charlie.

 He and Renee had had me when they were nineteen, a year after graduating high school and marrying. Renee had hated small-town living and before Charlie had even hit twenty-one, he was divorced and fighting for his parental rights against a woman who had run out and taken his daughter with her to Arizona. I’d barely seen him again until I turned sixteen and moved to Forks to live with him when Renee got remarried.

Dad and Renee seemed to get on well enough on the few occasions when they’d crossed paths, but I don’t think he ever really forgave her for taking me. He said he didn’t blame her for leaving, but there was no way he really forgave her for the way it had taken three years of court battles and legal fees for Renee to agree to two weeks in the summer and every other Christmas. It was the bare minimum and they both knew it. And I’d spent my life hearing nothing but how awful Forks was and how sorry she was I had to endure it.

My decision to move here had baffled and appalled my mother. But I didn’t regret it. She was the only thing I had to miss in Arizona. There were no friends for me to miss, no ties but those that bound me to her. And Forks was the first place in my life I’d ever had more than just that. I had a boyfriend who might liberally be considered perfect and a best friend who might genuinely be considered family.

Or, at least I used to.

            I didn’t need the note in front of me to read it; I’d memorized every line, every word and every splash of ink where the pen had snapped in the too-tight grip of his too-big hands. I knew every crease, and I knew that Charlie knew because he’d read it before he passed it to me, through Billy, from Jake.

            He missed me, too. He missed me but it didn’t change anything because I hung out with a bunch of blood-suckers and what part of “mortal enemies” didn’t I get? Jake may have crossed out his openers, but he wanted me to read them. It was petty and passive aggressive, but he was right. The wolves and the vampires were going full West Side Story and there was nothing I could do to change that. It was stupid, but no one had any interest in burying the hatchet and that placed me and my best friend on opposite sides of the feud.

            But were we, though? I wasn’t part of this stupid turf war. I wasn’t about to choose one over the other… but hadn’t I, already? When I’d said that it was always Edward? My stomach threatened to rebel as I remembered my friend’s face.

            I’d been over it a thousand times in my head, and the answers were no clearer than they had been before. Jake wasn’t speaking to me, Edward wasn’t going to let me go to La Push and see him, and Charlie had placed me under house arrest anyway, so it really didn’t matter.

            “The Blacks are practically family,” Charlie said to me over our dinner of ruined noodles and nuked sauce, pulling me out of my head and back into the conversation. He was explaining to me the details of my probation, all but telling me that my eternal grounding was lifted under the condition that I go see my best friend-cum-somethingorother. The word _family_ sent a jolt through me, a throb of familiarity as the strange dream I’d had the night before flashed through my mind and brought with it a surge of such fierce protectiveness that I wanted to snap that there was not ‘practically’ about it. The feeling abated quickly and left disorientation in its wake.

            In my dream, Jake and I had been playing cards and drinking beer. He was better at it than me, better at cheating and in my dream that was a good thing. He didn’t look much like the Jacob in reality; he was lithe and scarred and cocky. He was hard angles and runner’s muscle under battle-worn skin that was darker than it ever had the opportunity to get under the Olympic Peninsula. In my dream, he’d been happy. We’d been happy. We’d been waiting for something – for someone. For family. It was a word that echoed in my head and drove away any calming thoughts of eternal love.

            Family.

Jake was family – every bit as much as Charlie, maybe more than Renee. The dream was fuzzy and eroded by the waking hours, but it had sent a pang of pure longing through my entire being upon waking, and the feeling hadn’t dulled.

The dreams had started the very night Jake and I’d had our confrontation in the woods outside my house. Half-formed glimpses at first; blood-soaked and incendiary – bodies being dug up and burned by my own hands, the recoil of a sawed-off double barrel shotgun as I squeezed the trigger, the comforting weight of a wicked-looking knife with a serrated blade as I held it in my hand and slashed through the air with purpose. These things stuck with me through the waking hours, haunting every thought with the echo of hateful screams and classic rock. In my dreams, I smelled blood and motor oil and the cooking grease of diner food. I heard the growl of an engine as comforting as a lullaby and the soothing scrape of a matchstick as it lit into flames and the sonic blast of a gun as its muzzle flash lit up the night for one brief, gorgeous second of pure clarity of purpose.

I never told Edward about these dreams. Not when they started as nothing and not when they grew into IMAX pictures of a life I never lived. They were frightening and enticing and part of me wanted to run screaming into the cold comfort of Edward’s arms. Another part of me, and I didn’t like to think of how big that part of me was, wanted to follow the white rabbit right into hell and see how far these visions might take me.

            “Jake has been very good to you.” My dad continued, not seeming to notice that I had left the conversation entirely. But thoughts of Jake, as they often did, brought me crashing back to the reality of the situation; my best friend saw me as the enemy. And in a way, he was right.

            “I know that,” I replied and I meant it. Jacob had saved me from myself. When I was so low I couldn’t see anything past my own pain, Jake had pulled me from the edge of the abyss. More than that, I loved Jake. I loved him with a fierceness that didn’t always make sense to me. It wasn’t romantic, it wasn’t what I felt for Edward, but it was a constant, throbbing certainty that I would go to the mat, cut and bleeding for that boy, every single time.

            Every time but the one time it mattered, apparently.

            Since the words fell past my lips that day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had committed an inexcusable betrayal. I had chosen Edward over Jake. I had chosen Edward over family. I reasoned that Edward was my heart, my purpose for breath. Edward was the one I was willing to throw my whole human life away for. But in my heart, and in my soul, I could not shake the sinister shadow of doubt that had seeped into the darkest corners of my mind since that day in the woods which told me I had done something unforgivable.

            Charlie asked me if I missed Jake, and I did. I missed him terribly. But it’s not like I could explain a supernatural blood-feud between my undead boyfriend and my lycanthropic best friend. Charlie, who had grounded me following an impromptu trip to Italy and an episode of cliff-diving was setting the terms of my probation to spending time with people other than the aforementioned undead boyfriend and his family.

            Easier said than done.

            Dinner wound down with small talk and not-so-subtle talk about Edward’s college plans, and by the time Charlie cleared the table, I wasn’t thinking of dream Jakes or real Jakes or betrayal anymore.

            It didn’t last long, the guilt was my constant companion and the anxiety was its kissing cousin. It came right back around in full swing as Charlie confessed to a federal crime (opening my mail) and congratulated me on getting into the University of Alaska. A college in the middle of a state that had three hundred and twenty-one cloudy days and thirty days when the sun didn’t even rise, for all intents and purposes. It was the perfect college for a girl battling a newfound aversion to sunlight and a craving for the other, other white meat.

            Because that was the big plan. Run off and become a vampire. After graduation, which was barely three weeks away, and as soon as we were out of range of the treaty which kept the wolves and vamps at bay, I was going to wave a hearty fare-thee-well to my life as a human and reemerge as a newborn vampire. And the deeply repressed feeling of bitter dread and revulsion was also something that had not started until Edward came back from Italy, and I had stood with him instead of Jake.

            I ran my fingers through my hair as I heaved a sigh. What was wrong with me? I felt like my skin was stretched too tight, I was wired and out-of-sorts. The day before, my stomach was tangled into knots over the situation with Jacob and about my impending vampirization. Now, they were coated with a thick layer of self-hatred that felt familiar as an old blanket and I couldn’t for the life of me guess why.

            I turned my attention to the killings in the news, as my dad explained them to me. The five bodies found in Seattle and the too-casual way Charlie had mentioned them and the feeling of there being more under the surface of his words when he’d derided city living. Part of me wanted to pin the paper to a wall and find a pattern. To hunt…

            “Bells?” Charlie’s voice was sharp with concern as the world tilted under my seat, and my dad’s hands wrapped around my shoulders just before I tipped out of my chair. I felt light-headed and nauseous. Any trace of the thoughts I might have been having were erased under the sheer force of it.

            I had been thinking… News… Pattern… It was all gone. It was if a veil fell over my eyes and my thoughts were wiped away like so many drops of rain on a windshield. I fought for a second against the numbness, against the feeling of my slate being wiped clean, but then it was over. I was healthy enough to be embarrassed by all the sudden contact with the man from whom my standoffishness had been inherited.

            “Bella, are you okay?” Charlie’s face was inches from mine and his dark brows were furrowed in concern. He stroked my hair and his expression was the same as it had been on those few occasions when I could remember him shaking me awake from my Edward-fueled night terrors. Sick with concern and burning anger for the person who had made it happen.

            I pushed away, muttering that I was fine and before Charlie could retort, there was a polite knock on the front door. I all but leapt from my father’s arms, desperate to open the door and breathe for the first time since Edward and I had parted that morning.

“Coming,” I hollered, before dad could take it as a valid reason to bar my boyfriend entry into the house. As it was, Charlie still growled something that sounded like ‘go away’ at the door. My dad had no love for Edward, and had no problem making that clear. Maybe I couldn’t blame him, Edward was a killer and dad was a cop. Even if Edward didn’t kill people, he was still a predator and maybe some part of Charlie recognized that.

Or maybe he just thought that Edward was the guy nailing his daughter and his dislike had nothing to do with Edward’s species.

I answered the door, preparing myself mentally for the reaction I had to Edward. Looking at him had occasionally caused me to forget how to breathe. No, that isn’t actually supposed to be possible, but it happened. His marble skin and pale lips and bronze hair and liquid gold eyes usually left me stunned and gasping.

He was incredibly beautiful. But now, whenever I looked directly into his eyes, I saw my own uncertainties and fears and revulsions staring back at me. And instead of embraced by his warm stares, I felt entrapped by them. But the feelings fled as fast as they came when he smiled. Always, it was a fleeting spike of something ugly and unnamable before it was replaced with my usual light-headed, love-struck awe for this perfect creature. 

After some mild verbal abuse at Edward from Charlie, and after a round of Edward’s favorite new game, which was to see how many times I could write the same information down on different college applications before my head exploded, the conversation took a sharp turn into monster-making territory.

It was a popular conversation between the two of us; when I was going to become a vampire. I wanted to do it right out of high school, I had already gotten the votes from the other Cullens (barring Rosalie), and my crack about becoming a monster hit a nerve.

“Monsters are not a joke, Bella.” He tossed Charlie’s newspaper down in front of me and stabbed at the headline:

**DEATH TOLL ON THE RISE, POLICE FEAR GANG ACTIVITY**

I leaned over the paper and skimmed the details. Phrases jumped out at me as if my eyes were somehow trained to detect them. Phrases like “night prowler” and “no apparent connections between the victims” and “massive blood loss” and “exact cause of death is yet to be determined”.

“This was a vampire,” I said with a confidence that surprised even me, “And probably more than one. This looks like a nest.”

“More likely just a newborn,” Edward said, “a neophyte that no one is taking responsibility for, running rampant in Seattle.” He eyed me sharply, something in my voice giving him pause, “most people don’t call them ‘nests,’ Bella. Usually it’s ‘coven.’ Only one type of person I know of calls it a nest, and I’m fairly sure you’ve never met any.”

“What kind of person?” I asked, absently. In my head, I was taking a note of where the bodies had been found in relation to each other, determined to pin them down on a map as soon as I got to my computer.

“Not the kind of people you’ll ever have to worry about,” he muttered, deftly taking the paper from me and folding it neatly. “Don’t worry about Seattle. It’s not our problem. We wouldn’t even be monitoring it if it weren’t so close.”

He touched my face, his voice gentle but stern, “So often are my kind the truth behind the horrors in your human news. The existence of monsters results in monstrous consequences. Such is the way of balance, love. It’s Darwinism.”

“Every action has an equal and opposing reaction.” I looked into his gold eyes and wondered what the equal and opposing reaction was for the killings. If monsters kill, who kills the monsters?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Too Late for Love by Def Leppard


	3. Distractions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The voices in Bella's head have seen better movies than she has, Edward is looking to get himself shot, and Charlie, as usual, is the best part of a bad plot.

_It’s better to burn out_

_Than fade away_

-Def Leppard

 

            The news in Seattle plagued me all the way through the night, dogging my every thought. Five people were dead, a newborn vampire was on the loose and running amuck, the city police could not possibly do anything about it, and every creature with the power to stop it was cooling their heels in the country side.

            Sleep had evaded me and Edward’s usually calming presence had left me on edge instead. His dismissal, his thoughtless disregard, of those victims… it made my teeth itch.

            In Italy, after we had faced the Vulturi and come out alive, thanks to Alice’s premonition of my imminent vampirism, there had been a moment. One that I had never given much thought to before, but now filled me with shame and horror so potent, I felt like I was choking on it.

            A tour group – men, women and children – ushered through the catacombs and led like lambs to the slaughter into the mouth of the vampires’ nest... _coven_. Edward had led me away from the sounds of their screams, their cries for help. His words then, the same as last night, made a cold dread and a white-hot rage sweep through every part of me.

            _Not our problem._

            I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream at him for his heartlessness. I wanted to scream at myself for my complacency. How could I have just walked away? How could I have done nothing? What could I have done? There must have been _something_. Anything. Fake a methane leak, start a fire, cause a distraction. But I had done nothing.  I had turned my back on those people as surely as I had turned my back on Jake.

            Edward sensed my tension and curled an ice-cold arm around my waist, “What’s the matter, Bella?” He brushed his cool lips against my dark hair and some of the tension leaked from me, against my will. It was hard to stay angry at Edward, no matter how good the reasons. Sometimes, it scared me. How willing I was to let this man do just about whatever he wanted to me. I’d never given it much thought before. I would forgive Edward anything, no matter how badly he hurt me, _had_ hurt me, I’d fallen right back into his arms the moment I’d seen him.

            Was I damaged?

            “Nothing,” I mumbled, “Just can’t sleep.” It was true, but I could tell he sensed something deeper was not being said. I decided to fight one battle at a time and added, “Dad says Jake’s hurting. He’s my best friend; I should be there for him.”

            I felt Edward tense behind me, and the bed creaked slightly under his ministrations, “He’s not safe, Bella. I won’t have you putting yourself in danger.”

            “He’s not going to hurt me.” There was an edge of anger in my tone that I’d never used with him before. He pulled back from me, surprised or angry, I didn’t know. Probably both.

            “Out of the question.” He said with an air finality that set my teeth on edge.

            I sat up, barely able to keep my voice from rising to levels that Charlie would come to investigate, “I’m not turning my back on Jake. I won’t. Ever.”

            Edward sighed, his eyes turned dark and hard. “You already did, Bella. You did when you chose me. You chose to stand with me, and you accepted all the consequences of that choice when you made it. You can’t align with Jake and with us. It could start a war. Is that what you want?”

            “Of course not,” I snapped, “But I refuse to accept your ‘us or them’ crap. Jake is my friend and he needs me. And you just have to accept that I _am_ going to see him.”

            “You can try.”

            He tightened his arms around me, vice-like. Part of me viciously wanted to elbow him in the ribs, but that would probably result in a bruised elbow. His lips found the patch of skin behind my ear and my anger receded as if a curtain had come down between it and the rest of my higher brain functions. In my right mind, I might never have considered that there was something very, very wrong with how easily Edward Cullen could manipulate my emotions.

            “Let’s not fight, love.” He whispered, “Sleep, my Bella. We’ll discuss it tomorrow.”

            “Yes,” I promised with more force than I felt, “we will.”

***

            In my dream, I was with Jake. And I was angry.

            “You could have gotten yourself killed, you stupid son of a bitch! What were you thinking?” I dumped half an economy-sized bottle of peroxide into the deep claw marks marring his skinny shoulder and pressed a towel viciously down over the wound to stop the bleeding.

            The towel was soaked within seconds, the gashes so deep that white fat and pink muscle peeked between the strips of torn flesh. If it were anyone but Jake, we’d be scrambling for an ambulance and doing everything in our power to keep the stupid pup from bleeding to death. Jake was a fast healer, by human standards; the wounds were deep and jagged and he was still going to need stitches, but they weren't going to kill him.

            “You should see the other guy,” Jake growled through teeth clenched in pain. We’d gone to Florida to investigate a bunch of teenage girls who were wasting away to nothing and ending up really, really dead. No one was paying much attention to what appeared to be anorexia-related death, but when thirteen girls between the ages of thirteen and seventeen suddenly stopped eating until they stopped breathing in Tampa Bay, the grownups (Charlie, John and Billy) had sent us off to investigate. The thing behind these girls’ deaths had turned out to be a Kalu Kumara, and Jake had gone a little beserk when we’d finally caught up to it. The kid was right, though. He’d won.

            One hunt later and we’d shambled back to the motel to dress our wounds and Jake wasn't at all deflated by the Kalu taking its own chunk out of him before we’d managed to kill it. “I’m like a freaking X-man,” he said with a pain-laced grin, “seriously. That was some Wolverine shit.”

            I poured some more peroxide down his back, just out of spite.

            He needed stitches, and lots of them. Blood didn't bother me, but needles did. It wasn't something I couldn't manage, but it did make getting tattoos a bit of an exercise in endurance. Standing behind my shoulder, arms crossed over his chest and green eyes glowering down at our young friend, _he_ watched as I dug a small sewing kit and a roll of dental floss from the bottom of my back pack. I handed them off to the fourth member of our party. He was the youngest of us, a year younger than Jake but nearly as tall. He stool an impressive six-foot-two at fifteen and was due for at least one more growth spurt, if his recent eating habits were any indication.

             “I hate doing the patchwork.” He grumbled as he threaded the needle with the floss and I stepped back to give him room to operate.

            “Suck it up, Nurse Betty,” I said, “I need a shower.”

            Green eyes found mine as I dumped my duffle on the vacant bed in the double room and dug out a towel and some clean sweatpants. The Kalu might not have preferred girls my age, but the look it gave me left me feeling supremely bad-touched and I needed that off my skin.

            “You, uh, want some company?” _he_ asked me with an impish grin that was only half-joking. He had a name; something small and precious and beautiful. Something that slid off my tongue like a prayer. It was a name I should have known better than my own, but in my dream, there was no name. Not for him or for his little brother who had dimples and an earnest smile. In my dream, I knew them and I loved them beyond any word that could do the feelings justice.

            I matched his half-heated look with one of my own and closed the space between. Those gorgeous green eyes of his widened fractionally as I pinched the fabric of his t-shirt between my fingers, “You’d just be in my way, pretty boy,” I whispered and watched his face melt into a smile that was half disappointment and half relief. It was a line that we had flirted over, but never crossed and we both knew that _someday_ , the inevitable, was not going to be in the bathroom of a dingy motel in Florida with our brothers in the next room.

            The last thing I heard before I shut the bathroom door was Jake say to _him_ , “Dude, when you and Issy finally get together, she is gonna eat you alive.”

            Issy was me. And it felt right.

***

            I walked through school the next day in a haze, my head full of what I still couldn’t think of anything but my complete betrayal of Jacob and the killings in Seattle and the strange dreams that were like glimpses into a completely different life. An impossible life.

            I couldn’t remember much of them. I remembered Florida, Jake bleeding, and a monster that drained girls of their life-essence. There were two boys with no names and no real faces. I remembered impressions; dimples and hazel eyes on the tall young one. Green eyes and full pink lips split in an impish grin on the older brother. A sprinkling of deeply appealing freckles across his pale skin. I could remember thinking he was the most beautiful boy in the world.

            Awake, walking hand in hand with Edward Cullen, it seemed absurd. How I could think some imaginary boy with heat in his eyes and color in his skin and hair that was several shades darker than gold was more beautiful than the Adonis beside me?

            I should have felt exuberant; Charlie no longer had me grounded until the heat-death of the universe, the school year was drawing to a close and freedom was so close, we could taste it. The senior class was practically vibrating with it, and every wall and trash can seemed papered with notices to return library books before May 26th, to pick up year books and study for finals and order graduation gowns and class rings. I should have been part of that low-buzzing excitement.

            Instead, I felt low-level nausea when I thought of what was going to happen to me after graduation. I was going to become a vampire. I was going to become like that thing in Seattle that ran unchecked and killed innocent people. I was going to become that thing which the me of my dreams would have beheaded…

            No.

            That girl wasn’t real. Her friends and her life weren’t real. Edward was not going to let me hurt anyone. I was going to become a Cullen; a good vampire that didn’t feed off human blood. A vampire that was moral and respected human life.

            _Oh, right!_ A nasty, derisive voice whispered in my head, _if they respect human life so much, then why do they just sit around while innocent people are torn to shreds?_

            The truth was, I had no good answer for that.

            It was lunchtime, and we – Edward, Alice and I – were settled down at our table with my friends – Mike, Ben and Angela. Edward once told me that humans, despite our attraction to their beautiful faces, have a very natural, instinctual aversion to vampires. Looking at Mike, I could believe that. Mike had never liked Edward, had liked Jake even less, and had never quite let go of the largely one-sided flirtation we'd had had when I'd first come to Forks High. I would once have blamed Mike for his aversion to men of a supernatural disposition, but my months without Edward had taught me more than I'd ever anticipated. Mike wasn't boring or unlikable or pathetic. He was just normal. It wasn't his fault he wasn't Edward and it wasn't his fault I wasn't interested. You can't blame a girl for being a little twisted. I liked them slightly more or less than human.

            The Cullens were charming; Completely friendly, utterly welcoming, and wholly disarming. But they were still predators, and there was still an aura of wrongness about them that set most people on edge. I had never been as affected as my friends by the dissimilarity of the Cullens. I just assumed I was immune to it.

            _Maybe you’re just acclimated,_ it was that voice in my head again. She sounded like me, if I were ever capable of sounding so jaded and mordant.

            Acclimated? What did that even mean?

            _Think hard, Joanna, maybe it’ll come to you._

            I decided right then that I really don’t like it when the voices in my head seem to know more than I do while they call me the wrong name.

            Alice and Angela were having a conversation about graduation invitations and Angela asked if I’d finished mine. It was pure filler, conversations like white noise to cover the fact that I had nothing to say.

            “Not really an issue for me,” I said with a shrug, “my dad lives here and my mom knows the details. Who else is there?”

            _Come on, Joanna, you’ve got other family. You’re just choosing to ignore that fact._

            Shut. Up.

            Angela despaired over the number of invitations she had to address and I, in keeping with my parole conditions, offered to help. Not that I really wanted to lick envelopes, but I wanted to be out of the house and I wanted to spend some time with any normal friend I had. Which was a grand total of not many.

            Angela was a really nice person. She was kind, considerate, and so bland she made vanilla seem spicy. I didn’t mean that in a bad way, either. Normal was good, sometimes. Normal worked. But I felt so completely not-normal that I had no idea what I could offer this very nice, uncomplicated girl in the way of friendship.

            All my friends were monsters and killers.

            Wait, what? Where did that come from? My friends weren’t killers. The Cullens based their whole existence around not being killers.

            _The vamp camp has nothing to do with –_

Shut up!

            _Idiot._

            But the voice faded away, back to whatever messed-up corner of my mind it came from, just in time for me to get entrenched in a conversation about my release from the Château Swan. Alice wanted to celebrate and I could see her proclivity for taking things a step or ten too far planting visions of intercontinental mischief in her head. 

            I had no interest in any scheme she was coming up with and was all set to tell her so, when I caught a second look at her face. She stared vacantly ahead of her, mouth slightly agape and back ramrod straight. Her breath came in and out in swooping little gasps and her fingers clenched so hard to the table, I was afraid she’d snap a chunk off and expose herself to the whole school.

            Edward must have had a similar thought because the next second he was laughing (in a way that seemed obviously false to my ears) and flung an arm around her shoulder.

            “Is she okay?” Angela asked, genuine concern hedged with wariness as she looked at the unseeing eyes of the small vampire.

            “Alice pulled a late one last night,” I said, the lie rolling off my tongue with shocking ease, as if I’d been doing it my whole life. “Finals make zombies of us all.”

            Ben huffed a laugh, his only contribution to the conversation so far, as Alice muttered something about daydreaming and positively threw herself into a conversation about the new arcade in Port Angeles with Mike.

            I could feel Edward giving me sidelong glances and refused to meet them. I knew he was going to know what that was all about and the truth was, I had no idea. I wasn’t generally a very good liar, but that had slipped off my tongue like second nature.

            What the hell was wrong with me, lately?

            Edward and Alice held a subsonic confab and might as well have had a sign over their heads that said WE’RE TALKING ABOUT BELLA for all their subtlety. I tried to catch my boyfriend’s eye and ask what the newest disaster was, but Edward swan dove into a conversation about cars with Mike and I might as well have been part of the scenery for all the good it did.

            School was out by the time I finally got Edward alone to talk. We were in my room and waiting for my thousand-year-old Compaq computer to boot up (complete with all the grinding, squealing, shrieking sounds that usually accompany either a slow death or a modem that’s older than grit) when I turned on him.

            “So, what did Alice see today at lunch?” I wasn’t in the mood to play dumb with him, I wanted answers.

            Edward’s gold eyes met mine head-on as he said, “She’s been seeing Jasper in a strange place, somewhere in the southwest, she thinks, near his former… family. But he has no conscious intentions of going back. It’s got her worried.” There was no twitch, no hardening around his eyes, no pupil dilation or accelerated breathing. Nothing that would say to me he was being anything but utterly truthful.

            He was lying.

            If you were to ask me how I knew, I’d never in a million years be able to tell you. But I knew it as surely as I knew that Bert and Ernie were gay. Edward was lying.

            “You have an email from your mother,” he said, gesturing to the computer.

            “Don’t change the subject.”

            “There’s nothing to change. Alice has things well in hand. Now,” he pulled my desk chair out for me, “write to Renee.”

            My mom was in Florida ( _Jake, blood, monsters, green eyes, stifling muggy heat, dental floss stitches, full mouth stretched in a heated smirk_ ), settled for the time being while Phil coached baseball at a local college in between his minor-league tours around the country.

 _Dear Bella,_ it read, _hey hon! Haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks, I guess you’ve been busy. So have I!! I’ve been having a great time with Phil, touring America with his team and doing all kinds of crazy things. I took a sky diving lesson a few days ago! Leave it to me to forget I hate heights until I’m strapped to an instructor and jumping from a plane._

_The cities have been amazing. Just last month, we were in Boston. You’d have loved it; so much art and history. It’s easily one of the most beautiful cities we’ve visited. You should consider colleges there, they have some great ones. And I know it’s on the other side of the country, but is anywhere really too far away from Forks? Goodness, I wish you’d leave that one-stop town in the rearview mirror and come back to live with me. That place will suck the life right out of you, if you let it. You should, at the very least, come visit us in Florida – we’ll be here for the next couple of months._

_Give my love to Charlie, as always. And write more often!!!!!!_

_All my love,_

_Mom._

_PS, you haven’t said anything about Jacob in a long time. What’s he up to these days?_

            How was Jake? Furry and pissed off, I imagined. In truth, I didn’t really know what to say to my mother.

            _Dear mom,_ I composed in my head, _Definitely been busy. Edward proposed and I turned him down because you drilled it onto my head since I was old enough to understand the words that no good could possibly come of getting married out of high school. I know, it’s a stupid hang-up for a girl who has legitimately made plans to have her boyfriend’s dad suck the life’s blood from her veins come graduation and turn her into a creature of the night, but what can I say?_

_Jake’s not doing so good. I kind of screwed him over and now he’s sworn himself as my reluctant mortal enemy or something. Kind of what I get for choosing sides in an age-old battle between Vampires and Lycans. But ever since I did, I feel like a completely different person, and not in a good way. I have been having dreams of this entirely different life and it’s just bits and pieces and nothing makes sense but sometimes I want that life so badly that it knocks the breath from me._

_Good one about how Forks sucks the life from you. Heh, irony._

_I don’t like Florida. I think bad things live in that heat, and I don’t ever want to live there. I guess I’ll just stick to this one-stop town where you abandoned my dad and wouldn’t even let him see me in any meaningful sense until I was four._

_Stop jumping out of planes._

_All my love,_

_The daughter._

            The actual letter went, _mom, Jake’s good. Dad says “ditto,” Edward says “Hi” and stop jumping out of planes. Boston sounds nice, but I like Forks. Enjoy Florida and I’ll see what I can do about coming to visit._

_Love you too,_

_Bella._

            “I think a trip to see your mom would be just the thing for you, Bella.” I jumped, not realizing that Edward was right behind me and reading over my shoulder, “You still have those tickets that Esme gave you for your birthday last year.” He produced them from out of thin air and made a show of reading them, “And they’re about to expire. Might as well make a trip of it.”

            The tickets, like the mutilated car stereo in the back of the closet, had been gifts from Edward’s family on my ill-fated eighteenth birthday. I’d received them about ten minutes before I’d cut my finger on a bit of wrapping paper and Jasper Cullen, the newest member of the Cullen family, had tried to eat me.

            After the spectacular climax of that crappy night, when Edward had led me into the woods, dumped me, and left me to wander around in shock before Sam Uley had found me hours later all but catatonic. I didn’t need the unwelcome voice in my head to snort its derision to feel more than a little foolish about how I’d acted. At the same time, I still felt genuine anxiety when Edward was away from me for too long, all my abandonment fears coming back to me with a vengeance.

            I didn’t want to go Florida. I didn’t want to leave when things with Jake were so unbelievably screwed up. I didn’t want to push my luck with dad, the very day after he’d declared time served on my incarceration. I _really_ didn’t want to go to Florida.

            “Edward, I don’t know…”

            “Esme will be upset if you don’t use her gift, Bella.” There was a hint of condescension behind his reproach and I had to tamp down on my anger at it. He didn’t seem to notice as he went on, “I saw what you did to the car stereo. Did it say something to upset you?”

            “No, it just didn’t want to follow orders.”

            “What orders?”

            I smirked humorlessly, “I refused to vacate the premises. I had to forcibly evict it from my car.”

            Edward flashed a genuine grin and then turned speculative, “It’d hurt them to see the state of it. Good thing you’ve been on lock down, I’ll replace it before they see your truck again.”

            I got uncomfortable, the way I always did when fancy gifts were involved. I’d never had much money growing up and the Cullens had so _much_ , and I didn’t want to owe anyone anything. I made my own way, I always had.

            _Since fucking when, Joanna?_

            I practically raised myself, with Charlie across the country and Renee off in her own little world.

            _I remember it differently…_

Shut! Up!

            “I don’t need a fancy stereo,” I said, trying my best to sound more grateful than grating. The truth was, I’d kind of hated the stereo. It was sleek and shiny and didn’t really belong in my 1953 Chevy pickup. Elsa was big, and red and got about five miles to the gallon, but she had it where it counts. She’d already had her stereo updated once, from eight-track to cassettes and I kind of thought it was perfect, for her and for me. Charlie had a whole box of old tapes and someday I might actually get around to hearing a Van Halen song, just for the experience.

            The fact was, it was my truck and I liked it how it was. Or I had, before Edward and Jasper had torn my old cassette player out without my permission and inserted that little plastic thing.

            “It’s not for your sake that I’m going to replace it.”

            “You didn’t even ask me if I wanted it to begin with!” I snapped, earning a sharp look from my boyfriend, who stiffened at my tone.

            “I wasn’t aware one had to ask permission before giving a gift, Bella.” His tone was all reproach, he didn’t like my being ungrateful.

            “One does when one is tinkering with my stuff and not asking if I want one to tinker with my stuff.” I rejoined, not about to back down when I was right.

            Edward stared hard at me for several seconds, and part of me quailed under such intensity. The other part rose to the occasion, meeting stony glare for stony glare.

            “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, Bella.” He muttered, “Sometimes, I look at you and you’re not even the same girl. You’re thorny and argumentative and I think I know what it is.” He wrapped his arms around my shoulders, “This is cabin fever, love. You just need to get out of the house and see more than just the high school. I think a weekend in Florida would do you a world of good.”

            Oh, masterfully played, Edward.

            “You want to ship me off to Florida for the weekend?”

            “Well, since you refuse to go to prom with me, I thought we might both go.” Oh! And an iron-clad excuse to get out of prom! He was really pulling out all the stops. I couldn’t shake the feeling of incredible unease at going to Florida. I wasn’t even sure why; didn’t I want to see my mom? Was I gonna blow a weekend out of town with Edward because of one stupid dream?

            “I just really don’t think Charlie will go for it. And he just started trusting me again. I don’t wanna push things.”

            “Charlie can’t stop you from seeing your mother,” he pointed out, “she still has primary custody.”

            “I’m eighteen,” I pointed out, “No one has custody of me but me.”

            Edward positively beamed, “Exactly.”

            I stood there, gaping like a fish as my vampire boyfriend casually drew a loophole around my neck. That sly bastard had walked me right into it and there he stood, self-satisfied and puffed up like a smug tomcat.

            The last time I’d seen my mom was from a hospital bed in Arizona after a psychotic vampire named James had decided I was finger-licking good and tried to turn me into a smoothie. It had not been a pleasant visit.

            “Not this weekend, Okay? Next. I really just want to stay on my dad’s good side.”

            “You aren’t the only one who’s been trapped in this house, you know.” He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned across my bed, eyes hard and shoulders hunched. Edward could be demanding and unyielding, but he was rarely downright, openly petulant. I was immediately suspicious.

            “This sudden desperate need for fun in the sun wouldn’t have anything to do with ‘Jasper’s old family’, now would it?”

            Edward scoffed, “no. But you insist on being turned after graduation and this might be one of the last times you see her. And I know you miss her, you’ve been talking about her in your sleep.”

            Lies. All of it. I had not dreamed of my mom in more than three weeks and when push came to shove, I didn’t really know what I felt for my mom lately. Something I’d noticed in the fortnight I’d been having strange dreams; she was in none of them. I never even mentioned my mother, in that alternate world, and though I knew I shouldn’t think anything of it, an uneasy feeling settled deep in my chest whenever I thought of her lately.

            “Next weekend,” I promised, shuffling around him to my bedroom door.

            I led him to the kitchen where there was a note from Charlie taped to the fridge underneath a twenty dollar bill.

            _Bells,_

_Going to be home late, order pizza. Everything’s fine, don’t worry. I love you, kid._

_Dad_

Underneath that, on the same sheet of paper, a second note was addressed to Edward.

            _Cullen,_

_In the event that I get back after ten thirty: When I get there, don’t be._

_In the event that I get back before ten thirty: When I get there, please don’t be. _

_My eyesight ain’t what it used to be, but my aim has never been better and I’d just hate to mistake a pasty young boy like yourself for a deranged sicko lurking on my property with unsavory intentions towards my daughter. That would be tragic._

_Sherriff Swan_

“I…” Edward stared dumbfounded at the missive, “I think your father just threatened to shoot me.”

I looked from the paper to his face and back to the paper before nodding once, “Yep.” I tugged the money free from the magnet and grabbed the telephone off the wall, “Seems pretty serious about it, too.”

It was half past nine when Charlie banged open the door and stormed into the house with some bluster and mild cursing. He stomped into the kitchen and made a beeline for the beer in the fridge. He scooped a slice of pepperoni pizza from the cardboard box on the table and tore into it with his teeth, grunting to me and grunting more darkly at Edward. His eyes flicked pointedly to the message on the fridge but he chewed his pizza in lieu of comment.

            I followed his lead and had my own slice of the pie. Edward looked vaguely disgusted at our human food and I smirked, more for me.

            “How was work, dad?” I broke the silence before it could become tense.

            Charlie took a sip of his beer, “Good, Bells. Had some down time this afternoon and played cards with Mark.”

            “You slaughter him?”

            Charlie lifted an eyebrow in mock-offense, “I let him win a few.” Knowing Charlie, that wasn’t an empty boast to cover his losses, he literally _let_ his deputy win. If there was a card game Charlie wasn’t amazing at, I’d never heard of it. The man was a poker wizard but playing Rummy against him was an exercise in pain. “After that, I got a call from some people in Seattle who wanted to talk about those local deaths last year and go over any similarities to the ones in the city. The whole thing had me there for hours, digging through old paperwork.” He took another sip of his beer, expression gone dark. Charlie didn’t like the wide world sticking its nose in his small town.

            We lapsed into a comfortable silence, eating our food and listening to the TV in the next room.

            “So, Charlie,” Edward spoke into the quiet, “Did Bella tell you that my parents gave her airplane tickets on her eighteenth birthday, so that she could go see Renee?”

            I didn’t drop my slice of pizza, but it was a close call. As it was, I nearly choked on it. Charlie’s head snapped around to look at me, his brow furrowed in that way that was half concern and half irritation.

            “Bells?”

            I managed to get my breathing under control and swallow my bite before I nodded and nonchalantly as possible, “yeah, they did, but –”

            “They’re about to expire,” Edward spoke right over me, and Charlie’s jaw clenched because of it. Edward didn’t seem to notice the hostility being aimed at him from both directions, or he didn’t care, as he continued, “I think it would hurt Esme’s feelings if Bella didn’t use her gift. Not that she’d say anything.”

            Charlie took a swig from his open can of Bud Lite and said, “There any particular reason why you brought this up, Edward? I’m pretty sure Bells can decide for herself when and whether she wants to visit her mother.”

            I smiled, grateful to my dad for seeing that I was an adult who could make my own decisions.

            “Actually,” Edward said, all charm and innocence that did absolutely nothing to ingratiate him to my father, “in lieu of prom, I thought it’d be nice for Bella to spend the weekend down in Florida with Renee. Celebrate the upcoming graduation and get to see some actual sunlight for a change.”

            Charlie cast me a sidelong glance. If he had any problems with me going to Florida, specifically, it didn’t show in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “I think Renee would love to see you, I think you’ve been cooped up in this house for nearly a month, and I think some sunshine would do you some good.” He shrugged to me before his voice turned steely and he turned to my boyfriend. “You said ‘tickets,’ Exactly how many did your parents buy?”

            Edward took a breath. “One for Bella, and one for me.”

            “No.” Charlie’s tone was flat and colder than Edward’s skin, “ _Hell_ no.”

            “Why?” Edward asked with an overabundance of innocent deference to my dad, “You just said it would be good for Bella to see her mother.”

            Charlie made a sound that was somewhere between a scoff and a growl, “Yes, Mr. Cullen, but it just never seems to be good for her to go anywhere with _you._ ” He turned to me, “You are not crossing state lines with this boy, Bells. Not a chance.”

            “I’m not a child.” I snapped, well and truly tired of having people telling me what I would and wouldn’t be doing, who I was and wasn’t allowed to spend my free time with and where I was and wasn’t allowed to go.

            “If I want to go see my mother, I have every right. If Edward wants to go to Florida and catch some UV, that’s his right. If we happen to be doing it at the same time, that’s my problem and not yours.”

            “Like hell it isn’t!” Charlie shouted, “As long as you’re living under my roof, you will follow my rules. And my rules are to do your homework, not get pregnant, and not cross into federal jurisdiction with arrogant pretty boys who have proven themselves to be untrustworthy, unreliable and who have more than once shown a blatant lack of regard for your well-being!”

             “Excuse me?” I rounded on my father in a fury, “When has any of that _ever_ been true?”

            “Always!” Charlie shouted, “And you can pretty much consider the grounding reinstated as of now.”

            I was shaking with fury as I said flatly, “fine. Should I move out tonight or do I get a few days to pack?”

            Charlie deflated like a punctured balloon at that, and I instantly felt guilty for playing the move out card. Charlie, for all his rage, wasn’t wrong. I imagined what Edward and my relationship must look like from someone on the outside, and I couldn’t fault my father for not wanting Edward within a hundred feet of me. But the fact was, it was my choice. And choice was important to me. Especially now, when all my choices seemed to be life and death.

            “I don’t want you to move out, Bells,” Charlie said, and I wondered if he even still knew Edward was in the room, “I just want you safe. I want you happy.”

            I found myself slipping an arm around my dad’s back, and squishing myself right under his shoulder, half a hug that was meant to comfort him but ended up comforting me just as much, “Daddy, what makes you think I’m not happy?”

            “Well, the minute the little bastard who ripped your heart out came back, the boy who helped you through it disappeared. And not by your choice, either. You want to see Jake, and yet you don’t. Makes a father, and a cop, wonder what kind of guy keeps his girlfriend from seeing her best friend. And those kinds of boys are not the kinds of boys I want my daughter going anywhere with.”

            Okay, so Charlie had a really good point.

            “I’m eighteen dad,” I said, “If I’m screwing up, I’m screwing up on my terms. And I am going to go to Florida this weekend. And… and Edward is coming with me.”

            I dislodged myself from my dad’s side and grabbed the keys to my truck. “I’m going to go out for a while. I’ll be back before midnight and I’ll keep it within twenty miles.” I turned to the vampire who was silent and still as a statue, and my voice went flinty, “outside, now.”

            Edward followed me out to the truck, looking remarkably calm for a guy who was about to get torn a new one. I clambered into the driver’s side and he poured himself with artless grace into the passenger seat beside me, staring serenely ahead.

            It made me want to beat him over the head with a shovel.

            “What. The _hell_. Was that about?” I bit out around teeth clenched tight enough to ache.

            “You were too much of a coward to deal with Charlie so I interceded on your behalf.” Edward said, unconcerned by my anger.

            “Are you friggin kidding me right now?” I seethed, “You had no damn right to do that! You had absolutely no damn right to cause a fight between me and my dad, or to force me into a corner where I _have_ to go see Renee in Florida this weekend. When I see my mother has nothing whatsoever to do with you! And for you to pull a stunt like that after I already friggin said I didn’t wanna go!”

            “Bella,” Edward sighed, “please stop yelling.”

            “It’s my car, I’ll yell if I damn well want to!”

            “It’s also very unnecessary. I can hear you at a whisper. The shouting is excessive.”

            I growled, “You are so very missing the point of the shouting.” I slapped the car into reverse and peeled out of my driveway with maybe a little too much gusto, as my tires squealed and kicked rocks up in every direction.

            “I’m sorry I caused you and Charlie to argue.”

            I scoffed, “No you aren’t. You got exactly what you wanted. You’re just sorry as hell that I’m calling you out on it, for once.”

            “That may be true, but Charlie… he cares for your well-being. He worries, and you worry about his worry. I’m sorry I am a point of contention between you.” I didn’t believe him.

            But…

            Maybe I did believe him. Edward made my well-being the focal point of his life. He often went two or three steps overboard with it, but at the end of the day, everything he’d done was for me. So, maybe I could cut him some slack. Maybe I could forgive him.

            Who was I kidding? Of course I was going to forgive him.

            Edward sensed it and his face split into a dazzling smile, “So, where are we going?”

            “I just want to drive around a little,” I said, “I don’t really have anywhere that I specifically want to go.” That wasn’t true, but hell would freeze before Edward would let me go where I wanted. La Push – and Jake by extension – was out of the question.

           

            The lights were on when I got home at eleven. Charlie was awake and waiting for me. Edward was going to sneak into my room when dad was asleep, and I’d sort of assumed he would be, already.

            I passed the living room where he was watching the news (no bodies had turned up since the five discovered over the past three days, but the killer was still at large, according to the anchor) and he muted the television when he noticed me.

            “Bells,” He began, “Come sit down, kid.”

            I plopped down beside him on the couch, drawing my legs up under me. Dad was not the sharing-and-caring sort so whatever it was he had to say, it was important to him that I hear it.

            “Bella… Listen. It’s not a secret that I don’t like your boyfriend. It’s not a secret that I don’t trust him. I hope it’s not a secret that if he ever hurt you, there is nowhere he could run from me.” He sighed, rubbing his hands over his face, “Baby, you’ve never been weak. You’ve never been complacent, either. The fact that you have attached all of your happiness and self-esteem to this kid - the fact that you jump when he says frog - worries me more than you’ll ever know until you have a daughter of your own. I want you to be happy, and you… you just don’t seem to be.”

            Charlie had barely looked at me through his whole speech, choosing instead to stare intently at the remote control in his hands. I leaned against my dad’s arm and rested my head on his shoulder.

            “Daddy, I’m happy.” It sounded like a lie, and I didn’t know why. “Well. No. I miss Jake, being away from him and having him so mad at me hurts like hell. But that isn’t Edward’s fault.” Which wasn’t technically true; I may have been the one who screwed up, but Edward was the one stopping me from making it right. Not that I was going to explain that to Charlie; if I omitted the supernatural aspects of the situation, Charlie would take it as affirmation of Edward being controlling and abusive.

            “Just, look after yourself, Bells.” Dad planted a quick kiss on the top of my head and the nudged me, “Get to bed, kid. You’ve got school tomorrow.”

            I bid my father goodnight and went up to my room. It would be a while before Edward snuck in. I paced around my room, considering. I might have been tempted to chalk Dad’s hatred of Edward up to his clear preference for Jake, once. But Charlie was genuinely concerned – he thought Edward was hurting me, and that worried me. Not because I thought dad was going to hurt my boyfriend, but because his paternal instincts might land him in a situation where he got hurt, himself.

            _And you expected different?_  The voice was, for once, not the sarcastic version of me that had been making comments all day. It was a voice I desperately wanted to hear in person. It was amused without being condescending while it called me out on my crap the way that only the very best of friends can. It was Jake.

            _Seriously,_ he continued, _dude’s not an idiot and you’ve spent the last month since Edward came back practically wearing a sign that says ‘beat me now, I’ll apologize later’. When did you turn into a doormat?_

            Just like that, I knew where I wanted to be. And I didn’t have much time. Edward wouldn’t be around until Charlie nodded off, and if I told dad where I was going, he’d expect me to be there. Okay.

            I bounded back down the stairs, grabbing my keys. “I know it’s a school night, but I was thinking of going and beating some sense into Jake. That okay?”

            Charlie’s eyebrows shot up his forehead, “Uh… yep.” He smirked, “Just remember not to rough him up too bad. And not in the face, he’s got to live with those other boys.”

            I laughed and was out the door. If Jake wasn’t going to talk to me, and Edward wasn’t going to let me go see him, I was just going to have to embrace a time-honored tradition of rule-breaking.

            It was black as pitch in the driveway and I had to fumble my way to the driver’s side of my truck, careful not to trip in the darkness. I was finally behind the wheel and jamming the keys into the ignition and turning the engine over… or not. I repeated the motion, but there was not so much as a cough from Elsa’s engine. My eyes adjusting to the cloying country darkness, when a movement in the seat next to me had me jumping like a scalded cat and clawing at my ribs like I was trying to reach a weapon that was not there.

            Which was strange, I’d never carried a weapon in my life, but it was a completely instinctual reaction, as if I were wearing a shoulder-holster like my dad. The movement, as it turned out was Edward. I turned on the cabin light, and there he sat, looking out the window and holding a bit of my engine in his hands.

            “Alice called,” he said, his voice dangerously flat, “She panicked when your future abruptly disappeared about five minutes ago. She can’t see the wolves, and she can’t see you when you’re with them. Did you know that?” He looked up at me for the first time and his eyes were matte black and livid, “Can you understand how that might make me… anxious? She couldn’t even see if you’d come home or not.”

            “You…” Adjectives utterly failed me. “Why are you _constantly_ tearing bits out of my truck?” I wanted to scream. I wanted to hit him. I was held mute by blind, incandescent, impotent rage. I was being held practically prisoner… and there was nothing I could do!

            “I’ll have your car back in order by tomorrow morning, in case you want to drive yourself.” He seemed to sense the fury behind my words, and was not inclined to press the subject. “You can close your window tonight, if you want me to stay away. I’d understand.”

            I took a breath, “no,” I sighed, “I don’t think you would.”

            I climbed out of Elsa and tore off back into the house, tossing a “car won’t start, going to bed” over my shoulder at Charlie and stomped up to my room, slamming the door behind me. I tore over to the window and shoved it closed with enough force to shake the glass.

            To even my own surprise, I kept the damn thing closed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus points to whoever can tell me what movie Bella's inner snark is referencing.  
> Rock Of Ages by Def Leppard (I love Def Leppard more than even Dean does)


	4. Outsider

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Edward and Bella are in Florida, a black car rolls into Forks...

 

_I ain’t gonna cry,_

_I don’t want to scream_

_But I got so much left unsaid inside of me_

_-Bon Jovi_

 

            Edward and I didn’t speak again until Friday afternoon. Our plane was booked to leave at three and the flight was a little over five hours long. Florida was three hours ahead of us, so we would be landing at about eleven o’clock at night, which was deeply convenient, as Edward in daylight might have been far too _fabulous_ for mom to handle.

 The school day had been fraught with tension, I did not speak to Edward and he seemed to decide in the course of the day that I was the one being unreasonable and adjusted his mood accordingly.

            Alice kept shooting _him_ sympathetic looks as if to say it was only a matter of time before I came to my senses and apologized. Screw that! Mike could not have looked more delighted at the dissonance between my boyfriend and me, and as a result must have been thinking something bold if Edward’s murderous expression was any indication.

            When the last bell of the day blasted, I made a beeline for Elsa (fixed up, just like as if Edward had never molested her in a fit of controlling, paranoid douchery) and pulled my plain canvas duffle from the passenger seat. I slung the strap over my shoulder and draped my jacket over my arm. It was dad’s old brown leather bomber jacket. It was too hot to wear in Forks, and it was way too hot to wear in Florida, but for about ten seconds right when I got off the plane, Renee was going to see it and it was going to make her twitch. It felt like the right response to her comments about dad’s beloved town. Heh.

            Edward didn’t ask about the jacket and I offered no explanation. I spent the drive to Port Angeles in silence, only giving much sign of life when I turned up the radio and listened to the news report coming out of Seattle. Two more bodies had been found, all with the same injuries as the five that had turned up over the past two weeks.

That was a total of seven murdered people, and still neither the Cullens nor the wolves were doing anything to stop it. The vampires I could almost understand; they lived quietly, far removed from the doings of their kind. They lived alongside the humans, but they weren’t going to interfere with other vampires and throw themselves into their mess. I didn’t like it, but I could understand it.

Wasn’t the whole purpose of the werewolves to protect humans against vampires? When the hell had that become a jurisdictional issue? What, it wasn’t in their town, so they didn’t care? I felt a surge of disgust for the wolf pack that nearly overshadowed my love for one wolf in particular. Almost.

I’d tried to call Jake that morning, before I left for school, but Billy told me once again that his son wasn’t available. I knew it was crap, but I couldn’t force him to speak to me. Especially when I couldn’t get within five-hundred feet of him without at least one vampire going crazy. I told Billy to let Jake know I was going to be out of town for the weekend and gave him my mom’s number in Florida to call “when he became available.” 

 We were at the airport when Edward finally turned to me and said, “Are you going to give me the silent treatment all weekend, Bella? Because if so, I should probably have brought a book.”

            “I can recommend some titles, if you want,” I growled, “how about _Rose Madder_ by Stephen King?”

            Edward grimaced, “Norman Daniels, right? That’s deeply unfair, love.” He sighed, “But I concede that you have every right to be angry. I just wish you understood that the sole motivation in everything I do is how much I love you. How much I want you to be safe.” He grinned, “and how incapable you seem to be of keeping yourself safe.”

            “You were doing really good up until that,” I deadpanned, rolling my eyes. Some of the heat had left me, though. I knew he was just worried about me. I knew he loved me. I just wished he _trusted_ me, and I told him as much.

            “I do trust you,” he said earnestly, “I trust you implicitly. I don’t trust the wolf. Jacob can’t control his temper – few wolves can. I will not sit by and let you put yourself in a situation where you might be killed if I have the power to stop it.”

            I decided not to call him out on that bit of hypocrisy. I didn’t really want to fight; I wanted to enjoy this trip as much as I could. I wanted to spend what time I could with my mom happily. It might, after all, be the last time I saw her while I was still human.

            God, I’d all but forgotten about my impending vampirism. I tamped down on the knots that suddenly formed in my chest and allowed Edward to take my hand and my bag. He brushed his cold lips across my knuckles and smiled at me, with more warmth than I’d seen in days.

            Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

***

            As Bella and Edward were boarding a plane in Port Angeles, a ’67 Impala rumbled into the center of Forks, blasting muffled Van Halen from behind its rolled-up windows. Every head turned to see the old car purr down the street, the chrome finish glinting in the gray light of the overcast sky and the water in the muggy May air beading prettily on the black paint.

            Teenage boys gaped appreciatively at her as her loving driver coaxed her into a parking space outside of the Forks Coffee Shop. The music cut off as the engine died, the front doors opened and two men stepped out into the wet heat of Forks, Washington. Both men were tall and both men looked at the town ( _city_ , according to the pompous wooden sign that stood twenty-freaking-feet high on the way in) with the wary resignation of two people who had seen this shit before, and were not the least bit impressed with its rustic charm and moose figurines. The passenger was the taller of the two, with brown hair that was slightly shaggy and the pinched expression of someone who had spent entirely too many hours cooped up with their older brother and his music.

            The driver was shorter, slightly older, had green eyes and dark blonde hair he kept cut short and the sour expression of a man who had spent entirely too many hours cooped up with their whiney younger brother and his devastating lack of taste in music.

            They took a booth in the café and ordered coffees as they half-heartedly scanned the menus. Both the boys were hungry, having grabbed nothing all day except for some gas station burritos (for the older) and a salad (for his culinary-challenged brother).

            Sam Winchester was shooting his older sibling worried looks from across the table and Dean pointedly ignored them. The waitress, a pretty brunette with blue eyes who couldn’t have been much older than seventeen, set their coffee down in front of them and practically tripped over herself when Dean threw her a flirtatious smile.

            Not that the twenty-seven-year-old man was at all interested in reeling in some jailbait, but flirting came about as naturally as breathing to him. He ordered the biggest burger on the menu with as many toppings as it would take and a mountain of fries. Sam looked vaguely disgusted and ordered the salmon on rye with steamed veggies.

            Dean and Sam had spent the previous two days in Seattle, pretending to be FBI. They’d slogged around the city from crime scene to crime scene and every one was more sloppy and gratuitous than the last. It was almost like the vamps were going out of their way to make it clear just who and what they were to anyone with the spoonful of sense required to connect the dots.

            Their investigation had led them to a sticky note on a coroner’s report about two bodies found in the town ( _city_ ) of Forks with identical causes of death; severe blood loss caused by multiple lacerations – which was a polite way of saying that something had taken big, ragged bites out of them. The weird part had been when they’d gotten a look at the teeth marks in the ragged flesh and they appeared to be entirely human.

            “Yep,” Charlie had confirmed when they’d gotten in contact with him on Thursday afternoon, “These vampires aren’t the same breed you’ve hunted before. They’re almost completely human in appearance, teeth and all.”

            Sam had kept Charlie on the phone for several hours, having the sheriff dig up file after file of suspicious deaths around the state in the past two years. The local park rangers were deeply concerned about the killing of some endangered species in the forests and would have suspected poachers had the mountain lions and grizzly bears _not_ been killed the exact same way as the two people in Forks and the seven in Seattle. The state was beginning to suspect that the animal mutilations were the early work of a serial killer.

            “A serial killer who takes on lions and tigers and bears with his _teeth_?” Dean scoffed, patently unimpressed with the crack work of the local PD. There’s ignorant and then there’s just friggin stupid.

            “I know, boys, but people like the idea of one sick bastard with a craving for the other white meat a helluva lot more than they like the idea of a sick bastard with a craving for the other white meat, super strength and damn-near indestructibility.”

            “You seem to know from experience,” Sam noticed.

            “Yeah,” Charlie sighed, “We had a minor problem here in Forks, but the situation was resolved. We think the ones here were killing the wildlife – they don’t necessarily need to feed off humans to survive. But, like I said, it was taken care of.”

            “Mind if we check out the area? See if –” Sam was resolutely not looking at his brother as he spoke, but Charlie cut him off with a “no” that was maybe a little too quick for either of the Winchesters to ignore.

            “There’s no need,” Charlie covered, “no point and you two have your hands full enough down in the city.”

            Sam glanced at his brother, who sat on the opposite bed, cleaning his most beloved chrome-plated Desert Eagle and refusing to meet his eye.

            “Did that seem a little strange to you?” Sam had asked after he and the old hunter had finally disconnected.

            “Not really,” Dean said in that way that made it clear he was trying very hard not to find it strange, “I wouldn’t want to see us, either, if I were him.” Dean couldn’t blame the guy for keeping them away, Charlie’d gotten out of the life and he didn’t think they had any right to be walking in and screwing that up for the guy. Especially considering what their kind of life had already cost him.

            “Dude, are you seriously telling me that wasn’t suspicious?” Sam was casting incredulous eyes at his brother from beneath furrowed brows. He was shifting into epic bitchface and Dean did not want to deal with it.

            “Are you doubting Charlie, now?” Dean accused, “Seriously? _Charlie_?”

            Sam’s jaw clenched and the bitchface was at def-con one. He shook his shaggy head and his expression morphed into his let’s-be-reasonable bitchface. Basically, there were times when Dean wanted to whack his little brother in the face with a shovel.

            “Let’s just check it out. I mean, it’s Charlie. We owe it to him to take care of this.”

            Dean hadn’t liked it, not even a little bit, but in the end, he agreed to the three and a half hour drive to the rainy little town (city, dammit) and there they were. In a coffee shop where the coffee wasn’t all that great and the cups were too damn small.

            “So get this,” Sam said from behind his laptop (nowhere did it say that the café offered free Wi-fi which meant that either Sam had hacked it or his hair was getting Google, which was something Dean had long-suspected), “According to the Wildlife Preservation Society, the animal mutilations have been occurring steadily all across the Olympic Peninsula and into Canada over the past couple years. They seemed to stop for about six months, but have recently started up again. Whatever Charlie did, I don’t think it fixed his problem as much as he thinks it did.” Sam frowned, “looks like the mountain lion population has taken a hit, recently. Looks like the local creeps like themselves some endangered cat.”

            “What kind of douchebag hunts mountain lions?” Dean was never going to admit it, but he was a cat person to the bone. Sammy was all about the critters and the preservation of wildlife, but Dean wasn’t gonna lie, he liked the idea of putting a bullet in something that thinks of poaching big cats as a fun past time. 

            “The kind of douchebag that isn’t hunting local residents, Dean.”

            Which might not be entirely true; there had been two killed in this god forsaken town (city) and absolutely nothing to suggest that the one chowing on big game wasn’t the same one munching on townies.

            “One way or another, something doesn’t add up.” Dean conceded.

***

            I’d hoped, at least, to leave my nightmares in Forks. If I was going to be forced into what I’m fairly certain is a level of hell that Dante dared not contemplate, I should have been allowed to leave my strange dreams in the airport terminal.

            No such luck.

 

            In my dream, I was with Jake. And I was bored.

            Jake and I sat in the USF library and made like college students. At seventeen, I fit in better than my fifteen-year-old friend who was staring around us with open wonder when he was supposed to be helping me research.

            I sighed, “Babe, when this is over, I promise we will get you a brochure and steal some tee shirts. For now, let’s just get through this.” I scooted a book on European mythology under his nose, “less gawking, more reading.”

            “Someday, Issy,” He sighed wistfully, “someday, I’m gonna do this. Be normal and boring and shit.”

            Jake talked like the other one. The young one with the dimples and the earnest eyes. Little Brother wanted to get out of the life so badly, he could taste it. And he would, too. With his brains and his determination, he could have whatever future he wanted. So could Jake.

            It was the older siblings, my green-eyed boy with the heartbreaking smile, and me who would have to be left behind. I could live with that. Maybe Older Brother couldn’t. I worried about him; he took so much responsibility on his young shoulders. He looked after us all, keeping his rag-tag family as together as he possibly could against impossible odds.

            I hoped, selfishly, that once our brothers were carving out their own futures from the madness of their lives, me and him might finally be allowed to have what we wanted. Maybe sculpt out a future, together. Neither of us were going to college. Hell, neither of us were dropping out of the life. Monster-killing was what we were, it was all we knew. It was all we were good at. Hustling poker and tracking nightmares.

A pirate’s life for me.

            Those were thoughts for an entirely different time. I shook myself a little bit and went back to researching eating disorders – particularly anorexia – and noticed that the thirteen girls who were dead had died a hell of a lot faster than it usually takes anorexic girls to die.

            “Dude, check this out,” I said, sliding my laptop towards my counterpart, “according to all these sites, it can take anorexia months or even years to become fatal.” I slid a stolen copy of our latest victim’s police report across the desk to him, a very pretty girl of sixteen who had been a star soccer player a week and a half ago and was now a withered corpse, “does that look natural to you?”

            “No,” Jake said, “that looks really damn not natural to me.”

            I grinned, “Exactly!”

 

            Edward, for obvious reasons, elected not to join my mother and me on a walk through Jacksonville on Saturday morning.

            “You two are quite serious,” she observed from the kiss she’d seen us share on my way out the door.

            “Yeah,” I said with more conviction that I felt, “we are.” Things hadn’t been the same between us since he’d come back to Forks. Things hadn’t been the same with _me_ since he’d come back to Forks. We strolled along the shore, the sun glinting off the Atlantic Ocean as the tide licked at our bare feet. It was beautiful. Peaceful.

            Renee hadn’t been making a secret of trying to tempt me away from Forks. As we walked along the beach, she talked about the great colleges that Florida had to offer from the private Lib Arts colleges to the public universities. According to Renee, there was really nothing that the Sunshine State couldn’t offer me.

            I smiled awkwardly, trying to look as if the idea appealed to me even a little bit. I’m pretty sure I failed.  Renee didn’t seem to notice that my side of the conversation was practically nonexistent; she was determined to prove that Florida held all the answers.

            And maybe it did.

            It was crazy, absolutely insane. I was absolutely insane to think there was any credence to my bizarre dreams. Dreams which were probably telling me I needed to see Jake and spend more time with my mom. The only reason monsters were in it was because monsters were sort of my life. Heck, my boyfriend was a vampire.

            But what about the other boys? What about my green eyed boy who I wanted so much to build a relationship with, or his little brother who just wanted to live a normal life? Who were they? Why did my dreams seem to revolve around them? Where did they fit in?

            I took a deep breath and said, “You know what, mom? I think you’re right. I should at least give the schools around here a look.” I forced a smile that was far more convincing than I’d have given myself credit for and Renee all but leapt with joy.

            “As a matter of fact,” I continued, “I’d really like to check out the University of Southern Florida in Tampa today, if you don’t have other plans.” I trailed off convincingly at the end and my mother swatted my arm playfully.

            “Of course I don’t!” she tittered, “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you’re going to go to school here!” I certainly didn’t remember agreeing to that, but the more Renee thought she was winning, the better.

            The drive to Tampa from Jacksonville was about three hours and I knew Edward was going to throw a fit when I got back for leaving so long without warning, but hey. At least I wasn’t hanging out with anything that wanted to kill me. Including him.

            On the way, Renee kept up a steady flow of conversation; her goings on across the country, Phil’s baseball team, his off-season coaching jobs, their thoughts on having another child, the friends she’d made, the crazy things she’d done and some of their consequences.

            I took it all in, happy for her in a generic way. The truth was, Renee wanted that life, her life, and she wanted it for me. I was never going to have those sunny days with Edward. My life was going to be dark and tinged red. I was sure there would be happiness, I was convinced I would etch out some measure of balance for the things I was going to have to sacrifice in order to have that life with him, but I was never going to live in the sunlight. I wasn’t meant to.

            We lapsed into silence, broken only by the shuffling of radio stations. Florida was actually very pretty, when looked at from the inside of an air-conditioned car. The streets were lined with palm trees tall as buildings and the sky was a clear, clean blue as far as the eye could see. Skyscrapers cropped up in the distance and glittered in the sunshine that beat down on the asphalt and made the road ahead seem liquid.

            “… _Daddy’s girl learned fast, all those things he couldn’t say…”_ A snippet of song came onto the radio and I shifted in my seat, hitting the search button again to bring it back to that station. Bon Jovi sang straight from the hair and something about it filled me with longing. I’d never been much of a Bon Jovi fan, Renee certainly didn’t love the classics and I hadn’t spent enough time with Charlie to adopt his love of shredding guitar and pounding snare. But I could name that song in four notes and I’m sure that the incredulous glance my mom cast me was reflected on my own face.

            “I guess Charlie converted you,” Renee joked weakly, but there was a thread of wariness in her voice.

            “I guess.” I said with entirely false cheer. Truth was, I couldn’t recall a single time Charlie had ever made me listen to his music. Not even during our rare drives in the cruiser. He usually kept the radio off, making weak attempts at father-daughter conversations. 

            The campus looked exactly like it did in my dream; tall buildings and tidy lawns and walkways and parking lots. It was all very… collegiate. It sat right at the shore and looked out over the Ocean, a soft breeze rustled the grass on the sports fields and boys and girls with the same sleek, tanned bodies and sun bleached hair as my old Arizona classmates skipped from one building to another with end-of-term cheer.

            “Where do you want to go first?” Renee leaned in and asked with the conspiratorial giddiness of someone who was doing what they knew they weren’t supposed to. I was tempted for a second with the English Department. While I had no intention of submitting an application to the school, I found myself admiring it.

            Edward wanted me to apply for Dartmouth and Harvard. Expensive East Coast schools where I might postpone becoming a vampire and spend a year experiencing college life with the Ivy Leaguers. Edward thought I was being stubborn, wanting the change so soon after high school and refusing any attempts at negotiation. Maybe he was right.

            I wanted it so soon because the thought of being nineteen when he was eternally stuck at seventeen made knots form in my stomach. But lately, the idea of being eighteen forever wasn’t any more comforting. I dismissed my musings as cold feet, determined not to let myself forget that there was nothing life could offer me which I would want more than him.

            Was there?

            “The library,” I said with false confidence, “definitely the library.”

            We maneuvered our way through the labyrinthine campus until we found the right building. It was a huge, intimidating structure of glass and stone and steel. It boasted the latest technologies and amenities for their students’ convenience. It looked exactly as I’d imagined in my dreams, and that alone had me quickening my steps.

            The inside was comfortable. The colors were muted and negligible; designed specifically for maximum studying. I was winding my way to the staircase, up to where I knew there would be a table by a window where I had sat across from Jake in another reality.

            I stopped short when I saw it, empty as if fate itself were offering me a seat. I pulled out the chair and sat, staring around myself at the rows of bookshelves and the milling students. I felt heady exhilaration sitting there; as if I was in exactly the right place and the pieces were falling into place for me.

            I remembered the look on Jake’s young face as he took it all in, vowing to make more of his life than diner food and shotgun shells. And I got it, now. In a way that my dream self couldn’t. There was a feeling of potential that was positively palpable in the conditioned air.

            “I’m going to track down a cup of coffee,” Renee murmured, her voice respectfully low in reverence to the place where we were, “can I get you anything, honey?”

            Coffee was not something I usually liked, I found the beverage too bitter, but suddenly it was exactly what I craved. “Coffee sounds great,” I said, eyeing the computers distractedly.

            I didn’t have to look to see that my words startled my mother. Never in my life had she seen me drink coffee. “Charlie,” I lied with a shrug, grinning sheepishly at her. Her responding smile was ill at ease on her face.

            As soon as the click clack of her crocks were out of ear shot, I surveyed the room and wondered why my dream-self might have sat in this chair, on this floor. Perhaps it was chance, perhaps it was creature comfort with the sun on her back and cool air on her face.

            Or, perhaps it was the fact that the occult section was four rows to my right.

            I glanced self-consciously around me, half-sure that some librarian was about to jump out from behind bookshelf and have me removed from the building. I was sure it was written all over my face that I was not supposed to be there.

            But no one was paying me an iota of attention. And I felt the tension drain from my shoulders as I made my way across the library to the dark nook that housed the books on the occult. I found my eyebrows raising with each title I took in; _Dictionary of Demons; Dictionary of Angels; Encyclopedia of Gods; Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies_ ; _Buckland’s Complete Book of Witchcraft; Dictionary of Superstitions; Grimoire for the Green Witch; Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs; The Vampire Encyclopedia –_ Christ, but there were a lot of encyclopedias – _The Vampire Book: Encyclopedia of the Undead_ – with a confidence-inspiring picture of Kiefer Sutherland from Lost Boys on the cover – _The Great Encyclopedia of Fairies; Encyclopedia of Spirits: The Ultimate Guide to the Magic of Fairies, Genies, Demons, Gods and Goddesses_ and about a hundred other titles that boggled the mind and baffled the senses. Could all of these things be real? Could every Tom, Dick and Dracula that bumps a staccato beat in our nightmares really be walking amongst us? Hell, I already knew that at least two myths were real. But _all_ of them?

            I grabbed a few off the shelves at random and hauled them back to my table. The Vampire Encyclopedia was first. I flipped through it, expecting to scoff at the blatant inaccuracies of the vampires portrayed but according to the book the Cold Ones were only one of thousands of species of vampires. Mythologies the world over have their own names and descriptions for the creatures and according to the author, “vampire” was just a word that covered a wide variety of demons, spirits and various other creatures that fed on human blood.

            I retrieved a small notebook and a pen from my bag and copied down the titles of these books, and few interesting things I found in the pages. Like that dead-man’s blood was an almost universal weapon against vampires of every culture and mythology.

            I cast that book aside and thumbed through the _Encyclopedia of Spirits: Guide to Fairies, Genies, Demons, Gods and Goddesses._ The section on vampires said exactly the same thing; that there were thousands of known species and that it was a blanket term for a variety of things. I thought of the creature from my dream and flipped to the K section. I found the correct page and there was a folded piece of newspaper wedged into the binding and flattened so completely that I hadn’t noticed it when I pulled the book out.

            I plucked out the paper and smoothed it out on the table. It was a news article from the Tampa Bay Times. It was faded to illegibility along the creases. In the top left corner, written in faded blue ink were the words **KALU KUMARA**.

Suicide Epidemic in Tampa

            _13 bright futures were shrouded in darkness as an epidemic of anorexia swept the peaceful community of Tampa Bay. Jillian Sanders, 16, Emily Woodrow, 14, Jessica Guiverro, 17, Amelia Heath, 13, Anna Parker, 15, Grace Simpson, 15, Laura Thompson, 16, Kelsey Moira, 14, Sara Scott, 17, Bonnie McCale, 13, Nancy Hunt, 15, Gloria James, 16, and Nichole Preston, 15, were found dead in their homes over the course of the past two weeks as their bodies withered around them._

_The girls, in what police suspect was some kind of mass suicide pact, completely abstained from eating until their organs shut down. According to friends and family, the 13 girls did not seem to have any connections; different ages, different schools, and nothing that would link them all together as one group. Nevertheless, there seems to be no other explanation for this tragedy…_

            Jesus Christ. I dragged agitated fingers through my hair as I stared dumbfounded at the page. It was real. It was _real_. And I had been there. I had sat in this very seat and read this very article and referenced this very book. I had sat across from Jake and hunted…

            My head spun. The world tilted, I put my head on the table and tried to breathe as my thoughts swirled and evaporated. What was I thinking? It was something important. What was I doing here? Really, this was stupid. Edward was going to be worried about me. Edward. My world. My future. Why was I in a library three hours away from him when I could be back in his arms?

            All my anxiety about being away from him, which had been suspiciously dormant all morning, came back with a vengeance and I tried to stop my hands from shaking as I stuffed my notebook and my pen and the scrap of newspaper back into my bag.

            He was going to be furious with me for being away so long. He was going to worry. I should get back. The books lay forgotten on the table as I slung my bag over my shoulder and hurried to the stairs.

            I nearly barreled into Renee as she came up the stairs with an eco-cup in each hand. “Where’s the fire?” she joked as she handed me a cup, “Cappuccino. I shudder to think what recycled grinds your dad has you drinking, but these are excellent. We should introduce you to Starbucks while you’re in town! I think you’d love a mocha!”

            I forced a smile, not really interested in a coffee tasting. I just wanted to get back to Edward. “That sounds great, mom, but I think we should head back to Jacksonville. It wasn’t very polite to leave Edward there alone.”

Renee followed me down the stairs, and her disappointment was palpable as she said, “But I thought we were going to tour the campus.”

            “I filled out a request for information,” I lied, “They’ll send me all kind of stuff. If I come here I’ll know the place like the back of my hand.”  I was purely placating her with the idea of attending USF. Florida school was going to be impossible; _any_ school was going to be impossible. I couldn’t attend school and combat my new vampiric urges.

            Ever since Jake and I had stopped talking, I felt like I was splitting at the seams. Weird dreams and doubts that I’d never had before. I rubbed my head and sipped my coffee (which was surprisingly enjoyable) as I led mom back to the car.

            I thought I might be losing my mind. Or I might be finding it.

            One way or another, something didn’t add up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I got a message on this a couple days ago and completely forgot it existed until then. I read back through it and found that I had a chapter I'd finished and decided to publish. I freaking enjoy this story and plan to continue. If you're a WWSUIL reader, I'm still updating my Sherlock fic don't worry!! 
> 
> Love!


	5. Predators

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean Dean goes where he isn't supposed to. Bella feels what she isn't allowed to. Jake is just mouthy as hell.

_Tell me what it takes to let you go._  
Tell me how the pain's supposed to go.  
Tell me how it is that you can sleep  
In the night  
Without thinking you lost everything 

_that was good in your life to the toss of the dice?_

-Aerosmith-

 

The one and only motel in Forks was nestled on the outskirts of town where no one could see its horrible, Pepto Bismal paint job. Dean coaxed his baby up the cracked driveway, careful of the uneven tar and alert for the sound of scraping along his undercarriage. Sam sat half-out of the window like a giant, shaggy puppy as water drizzled onto his face. It was a reprieve from the stifling muggy heat of the oncoming summer.

            For a place that seldom saw sunlight, the weather was shaping up to be brutal. Dean was looking forward to putting this place in the rearview mirror, he still felt guilty for even being there. Charlie had made it perfectly clear that he could handle this and the older Winchester brother was perfectly happy to stay the hell away.

            They checked into a double and Sam threw his duffle on the bed nearest the door. He propped his laptop on his knees and began researching what Dean guessed were species of vampires that didn’t fit the usual patterns.

            It was Friday afternoon, barely five o’clock and Dean felt as if he were splitting at the seams. Thinking of Issy… well, thoughts of her kept him from getting too sober most nights.

            He clenched his fists and grabbed his jacket. He wasn’t going to think about it because it wasn’t going to change anything. His parents were dead, his friends were dead and he might have to kill his brother. Dean tried not to hate John for putting that on his shoulders. He was a good son.

            He grabbed his jacket and his gun, tucking the piece into the holster at the base of his spine. He told Sam he was going to the local library, and slammed the door behind him before Sam could get more than one abortive syllable out.

            Dean wasn’t going to see Charlie. He told himself that right up until the moment he was standing on the street outside his house. He glanced at the old Queen Vic patrol car in the driveway and tampered down on his pavlovian urge to be a belligerent smartass. Charlie didn’t need any of his crap, he shouldn’t even be there. He should have turned around and walked away. He was going to. He was not going to knock on that door, he was not gonna bring his bullshit to Charlie. He was gonna do his job and book the hell out of Washington as fast as he could.

            He stared up at the second floor window which looked down on the street and thought about the town Charlie sometimes talked about with the wistful regret of a man who can never go home again. Dean knew the feeling; the closest he would ever come to going home was when he and Sam cleaned a poltergeist out of his old house in Kansas.

             Charlie had spoken sometimes of the quiet town where he’d spent his childhood until he was eighteen. He’d been on the brink of marrying his girl, Renee, when his kid sister had been taken by a Muma Pădurii. Like so many before him, Charlie had been sucked into a revenge quest which became his whole life.

              “I never wanted any of this for her,” he’d said to Dean when he’d called to tell him that she was dead. That they both were. “I’m so sorry, Dean. I… I know how much you loved her.” Dean had listened to the hollow voice of a man whose grief was beyond even tears and felt a part of himself shrivel up and die.

            It was the job, he knew it. Their lives came with a sell-by date and Issy and Jake had reached theirs. It was not going to be the first time he felt the brutal stab of failure, of guilt for the people he couldn’t save. It was not going to be the last.

            She’d been wild; a five-foot-seven hurricane with her dark hair flying in the wind as they sped down a Midwestern highway with Led Zepplin blasting from his baby’s speakers. Her eyes bright with the thrill of adventure and her smile like a secret the two of them shared.

            Dean clenched his hands into fists, slamming the door closed on those thoughts before he did real damage both to himself and to the home she never got to see. Charlie quit hunting; he’d quit the life for the same reason he’d entered it. Because the price was too high not to.

            He was about to turn away when the front door opened and there stood the man himself; he’d grown a mustache since the last time Dean had seen him, it was a bushy black number that Dean would probably have joked made him look like a failed porn star. It was impossible to look at Charlie Swan and not see Issy in his eyes and smile. He wasn’t smiling now. He looked distracted and concerned, a look Dean was used to seeing on his dad’s old friend.

            Charlie looked up and met Dean’s eyes across the road, his already-pale face draining entirely of color.

            “What are you doing here, Dean?” He asked, his voice low as if afraid someone might hear them on this deserted street. “I _told_ you and Sam – ”

            “I know,” Dean said holding up a hand, “and I’m sorry. But we are just following a lead.” Dean sighed, “I didn’t want to come. I don’t wanna stir up crap for you, Charlie.”

            Something in Charlie’s face softened but the stiffness remained in his shoulders. “Look,” he said, “It’s good to see you, Dean. Really, it is. I heard about what happened to your dad and I’m sorry.” He clapped the younger man on the shoulder, “but you can’t be here, son. Things here… I’ve got it handled. You should be in Seattle. You boys are needed there. I’ll…” he sighed, “I’ll send you what I can about what you’re after.”

            He said it as if he were almost afraid to say ‘vampires’ out loud. Dean’s brows drew together; something wasn’t right here.

            “We’ll be gone in the morning,” Dean assured and Charlie nodded, a humorless smile ghosting over his face. He looked down and his glance caught on the reflection of the ring Dean wore on his left ring finger. It was a stainless steel double band welded together. The ring Dean had given Isabella for her nineteenth birthday and she had worn around her thumb until she died. Charlie had mailed it to Bobby’s house in Sioux Falls.

            Dean slipped his hand in his pocket, self-conscious.

            Charlie sighed, “I’d invite you in for a beer, son, but I have to get to the station. I’ll send what I’ve got to Sam’s computer.”

            “Here,” he pulled one of his false cards from his pocket and handed it to Charlie, “That’s my number, if you need to reach us.”

            Charlie looked down at the card and smirked, “nice name.” He pocketed the card almost reverently, sadness like a cloud around the older man.

            “It’s good to see you, sir.” Dean usually didn’t call anyone but John by that title, but he respected this man nearly as much as his own dad.  

            Charlie sighed, turned toward the Queen Vic, turned back, “You take care of yourself,” he said, “These things, they’re… they’re not what you’re used to. Watch your ass, hear?”

            Dean nodded, stepping off the street and watching as Charlie packed himself into his cruiser and drove away, waving as he went.

            Dean pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his jacket, hitting the number that would connect him with his brother.

            “Dean?” Sam answered.

            “I hate to say it, but I think you were right.” Dean stared after the receding taillights of the cruiser, “Charlie knows something.”

***

            The day Edward and I were leaving Florida, Renee insisted on one more exclusive mother-daughter outing, walking along the beach outside her rented house. I’d given no more thought to the insanity I’d experienced that first day and whatever I had plucked out of that library had stayed crumpled at the bottom of my bag. The whole experience had taken on a dreamlike quality for me. I knew I’d really gone with mom to the college but everything was vague and surreal. I barely remembered anything after waking up beside Edward that morning.

            I put the whole silly thing behind me, determined to enjoy the rest of my time with Renee and Edward before I had to return to Charlie’s glowing disapproval.

            “Bella,” Renee said as we walked along the beach, the salt water tickling our feet, “I’m worried…”

            It was a tone I recognized well; Renee on one of the rare occasions where she was determined to be anything resembling a mother to me. Not that she’d had much interest for the rest of my life, it was daddy who…

            What? No, that wasn’t right at all. Renee had been my primary guardian my entire life. I’d rarely seen Charlie before moving to Forks. I shook my head, refusing to dwell on such a thing.

            “What’s wrong?” I asked, “what can I do?”

            Renee stared out into the crystalline waters of the sea, her shoulders squared, “It’s not me,” she said, “I’m worried about you… and Edward.”

            And my parents said they had nothing in common. I considered telling her that very thing but decided to hold my tongue and hear her out.

            “You two’re more serious than I thought,” she said almost apologetically. “There’s something about the way you two are together… it’s strange. He’s so, I don’t know, _protective_ of you. As if any minute he might throw himself in front of a bullet to save you.”

            “Is that a bad thing?”

            Renee near-smiled, “no. It is strange, though. He’s very intense about you… and very careful. I don’t understand your relationship. But,” her eyes turned cloudy and fretful, “Sometimes, you move around him like gravity, every little shift coordinated perfectly. Like magnets. Other times…” She stopped, frowning to herself.

            “Other times I what?” I asked, feeling the first twinge of irritation.

            “Other times, you look at him as if you don’t quite know who he is. Like he’s someone you saw in a dream once. Sometimes, you look at him as if you’re searching for someone else in his eyes.”

            For a split second I imagined warm green eyes and freckles and pink, inviting lips. I almost smelled warm old leather and dime-store shampoo. Just as quickly, it was gone.

            “I think you’re just imagining things,” I said, though it sounded forced and hollow to my own ears. Renee could be swayed so easily and for a second, I felt a twinge of guilt. She was spot-on this time, her observations uncannily accurate.

            And there was more than just concern in there; it was a twitch in her expression, a crack in her chassis, but right around the edges of affection and maternal concern, there was fear. There was genuine apprehension like every word was a potential tripwire. I didn’t really know what to make of it.

            I looked out into the eternity of the ocean, watching the sun glitter off the waves and feeling the sun warm on my back. It wasn’t forever, my forever was dark and beautiful and by Edward’s side. But for that moment, it was enough.

            We arrived back at Charlie’s house at around five o’clock at night and he greeted me at the door with a hug.

            “How was your trip, kid?” He asked as he took my duffel bag from me and hung his old bomber jacket on the hook by the door. He was smiling in a way that suggested something had happened while I was gone; something he approved of.

            A glance at Edward’s down-turned lips told me it was something my boyfriend was less than enthusiastic about.

            “Jacob has been calling here like a telemarketer all weekend,” dad said, “I told him you went to Florida for the weekend and he’s been ratcheting it up to 90 all day. I’m sending him the phone bill.” He cracked open a beer from the fridge and took a long pull. “I ordered enough Chinese food to feed an army. Call Jake.”

            The words were barely past his lips when the wall phone went off like a siren. I snatched it up, pointedly not catching Edward’s disapproving frown.

            “Jake?”

            “The one and only,” came the wry reply. Relief washed over me with the tide of his rumbling voice. I thought of his face, dark eyes lit up with humor, eyebrows quirked in amusement and that cocky upturn of his lips like the world was a joke and we were the punchline. I thought of the Jake of my reality and the Jake of my dreams, two sides of the same coin; arrogant and charming and unmistakably deadly. Warriors, both of them.

            In that moment, nothing in the world existed but the two of us; together against the rest of the world. “Damn, it’s good to hear your voice.” I said, though it came out a little shaky.

            “You too,” came the earnest reply. And then, abruptly, “Are you going to be in school tomorrow?”

            “Uh,” I said, “Yeah. Where else would I be?”

            “Good. I have to go.”

            “You just called me!” I argued, “Charlie ordered takeout. You should come over.” I ignored the low growl from behind me.

            “I’ll see you, Bells.” Before I could make a sound of protest, Jake was gone.

            “Dammit!” I muttered, tossing the phone back into its cradle with maybe more force than was needed.

            I turned and Edward was standing over me, his face impassive but his eyes dark with brooding anger. “Why do you insist on playing with fire, my Bella?”

            I chose to ignore his barb and glanced back at the phone, “well that was weird.”

            “Is everything alright?” Edward asked, his arms coming up to wrap around me. I relaxed into his touch, but my mind stayed fifteen miles away, up to La Push where Jake was planning something and not letting me in on it. All I’d managed to glean from that abrupt conversation was that I really shouldn’t be surprised to see Jake at Forks High tomorrow. It was the only reason he’d want to know.

            For an instant, I considered that maybe he was checking to make sure I hadn’t been vampirized on my trip but dismissed it as stupid. Jake was smarter than that, He knew I wouldn’t come back if that were the case. Though it might have been part of his frantic attempts to reach Charlie all weekend… though why he didn’t just come to the house was beyond me. 

            “I have no idea,” I replied, unwilling to give up any information on my friend and the motives which I suspected would become apparent in short order. Jake wasn’t like the Cullens; if he was thinking it, there was a ninety-nine point nine-nine-eight percent chance he was going to do it. Ever since we were kids, hopping from one….

            What?

            My thoughts slipped away like so much water cupped in my hands and I wobbled on my feet, feeling light-headed and without equilibrium. The feeling lasted only a few seconds and when I steadied myself, Edward was looking down on me with the full force of his breathtaking beauty. His brows furrowed in concern that I felt unworthy of. How could someone so perfect want me?

 The thought made me blush.

“There you are, my Bella,” he whispered as if it were the first time he’d seen me all day. As if he were finding something in my eyes that had been missing. Hell, maybe he was.

There was a pointed cough from the doorway and we pulled apart as Charlie bustled in, plopping two overstuffed bags full of takeout boxes on the table grumpily, shooting Edward a particularly dark look, as he wrenched open a carton of General Tso’s chicken and dug in with a fork. A look at the greasy food had my stomach rumbling.

I set myself beside my dad and pulled a box of veggie Lo Mein from the brown bag, fishing out the rest of its contents to match.

“So, how was your weekend, dad?” I tucked into my noodles as Charlie shot me an indulgent smile. He could see right through my botched attempt to subtly defuse the tension in the room and he lifted an arm and brushed it over my hair with the same depth of affection he’d used when I’d been a little girl. The gesture was small, but it sent a childlike contentment through me, an understanding that he was my dad and he loved me.

“One of the guys from the FBI, the ones who are working on the Seattle case, came into town to ask some questions.” He said, utterly nonchalant as he dug out an eggroll.

“Oh? That must have been cool,” I said and noticed an official-looking business card taped to the fridge. The name on the card was Agent Robert Plant. I felt a barely-there flash of recognition and accompanying warmth.

Feeling somewhat light, I settled down to eat.

 

 

The next day, we were pulling into the parking lot of the school when Edward’s hands tightened fractionally on the steering wheel. We were in his Volvo, Elsa having been left at the school all weekend. A moment before, he’d been relaxed, but as we got closer and closer to our destination, the more he seemed to struggle not to snap the wheel into pieces.

“If I asked you to do something, would you do it?” He asked, his voice tight.

I cast a glance out the window, a wild hope taking root in my chest. “That depends.”

Edward rolled his eyes and sighed, “I was worried you’d say that.”

He rolled to a stop in a space and turned to me, his eyes fractionally darker than their usual liquid gold, “Stay in the car.” It sounded much less like a request than a demand. “Stay here until I come and get you.”

Across the asphalt, I spotted a solitary figure in black leaning against a black beast of a motorcycle. It was Jake, and the embers of hope inside me burst into roaring flame.

Jake had upgraded from the too-small model he’d built alongside the one he’d built for me. The motorcycle against which he was leaning casually was, and I had no idea how I knew it, a Triumph Thunderbird Storm. A cross-country horse that was, honestly, the only bike that could possibly suit Jake.

            At first glance, he appeared as utterly relaxed and carefree as the day I met him. I thought of the men I knew and the version of him from my dreams; as quick to laugh as to kill, cocky and carefree and wild as the forests.  

            Under that relaxed façade, however, there was a tight cord of tension that ran through every rippling muscle of his body and his eyes darted all around him predatorily. He looked like he could burst into lethal action at any second.

            “No,” I said, never once taking my eyes away from the looming figure several yards away.

            Edward sighed, “He is here to see me, Bella.” There was reprimand in his tone, I gamely ignored it. “He wanted a neutral place to meet and knew that I would be wherever you are.”

            “The school,” I wasn’t surprised, only vaguely impressed. In a whisper I barely recognized as my own, I added, “He always could bring a plan together.”

            I was out of the car before Edward could so much as utter a syllable of protest, my feet following the invisible tether that bound me inexorably to Jacob. Edward caught up to me a second later, taking my hand in his only a little too tightly as I all but dragged him onward.

            Jake’s eyebrow rose expectantly as we approached. I noticed the way my classmates gave him a wide berth, no one willing to catch his eye. Jake was tall and broad and looked like he could bench press a semi. It struck me suddenly that, to the civilians around us, Jake looked dangerous. And you know what? He _was_.

            Edward pulled me to a stop several feet away, dragging me half-behind his body. “You could have called us,” he practically snarled.

            Jake was utterly unimpressed by his wrath, “Yeah,” he snorted, “I dialed Transylvania 6-5000, but no one picked up so…” He trailed off with a shrug, oozing belligerence from every pore.

            “You could have reached me at Bella’s, of course.”

            Jake cocked an eyebrow, “That would require talking to you, and you aren’t exactly riveting conversation, Chuckles.”

            Edward’s jaw tightened, and I privately questioned the wisdom of deliberately provoking a vampire in the middle of a crowd in broad daylight.  

            “I already know what you came to say,” Edward said, “Message delivered. Consider us warned.”

            Jake leaned forward in an unconsciously menacing way, “Even you can’t be stupid enough to think these things are unconnected.”

            “Warned about what?” I asked, looking between the two.

            Jake ogled at me before rounding on Edward, looming over the vampire, “You mean you didn’t even tell her?” He growled, actually _growled_ , “What? You thought she didn’t have the right to know, or that she’s too weak and delicate to be given straight answers?”

            “Hi!” I said too loud, “I’m standing right here. Maybe someone wants to fill me in?”

            Jake brushed off Edward’s warning glare, “There was an incident,” he said, “One of the vamps, the one built like a vending machine – ”

            “Emmet,” I supplied.

            “I care. Anyway, the Vampinator crossed treaty lines because – spoiler – vampires aren’t very bright but have arrogance in spades, and he tangled with Paul and it screwed the whole hunt and now we’re back to square nothing.”

            “Emmet and Paul fought? Are either of them hurt? What were you hunting?”  

            Jake shot Edward a withering look, “Jesus Christ on a tortilla, you didn’t tell her anything, did you? Just packed her up and shipped her off so that she wouldn’t –”

            “Leave.” Edward said, his voice at sub-zero temperatures, “Now.” I caught the look on his face and it was frozen in an expression of twisted rage. It was a look that made me want to step between him and Jake, to protect my family against this monster. Against this vampire.

            Jake, as usual, was underwhelmed, “Or you’ll what, you blood-sucking disco ball? Sparkle at me?” Jake caught my eye, “Oh yeah, learned that fun fact. And I gotta tell ya, it’s _hard_ to be intimidated by anything that actually glitters in sunlight.”

            And then it all clicked into place. Hunting. Edward’s insistence. Knowing he was lying as he waved the tickets in front of my face. Alice’s episode in the cafeteria. The Pack and the Cullens tangling over crossed lines in the sand while their prey danced off into the forest.

            “Victoria,” I said, waiting for the panic to seize me and surprised when it never came. In its place was rage. Cold, black, gank-happy rage. I wanted to deep-fry that bitch and I wanted to sing a jaunty tune as I did it.

            “Bingo, Bells.” Jake said with startling sobriety.

            “She’s come back for me.” I said, placidly. My lips fumbling over the words. Edward mistook my feelings for fear because he pulled me tightly to his side.

            “It’s fine. I’ll never let her near you,” he assured, “its fine.” He glared at Jake, “Does that answer your question, mongrel?”

            “You didn’t think she had the right to know?” the wolf demanded, “It’s her life.”

            “Why make her afraid when she was never in danger.”

            “Better frightened than lied to.” It was deadly quiet and I felt myself beginning to tremble with something I could barely give name to.

            “Hate to burst your white-knight bubble, but that isn’t fear, Eddie.” Jake’s grin was positively feral, “It’s anger.”

            “You lied to me.” I said, “You lied right to my face.”

            “I was trying to protect you…”

            “You should have just trusted me.”

            “Bella…” Edward’s eyes went soft and wounded.

            “There’s more!” Jake piped up cheerfully.

            “There always is.” I sighed, “You think the killings in Seattle are related to Victoria coming here, right?”

            “Exactly.”

            “Jolly!”

            “There is no proof of that,” Edward interjected, “It’s speculation at best.”

            “Seriously?” Jake and I said in perfect skeptical tandem.

            “Even your alpha isn’t cosigning on that idea, Mongrel.” Edward snapped, more defensive of the way I seemed to be siding with Jake than of the idea.

            “The pack is being about as useful as dick-flavored ice cream, yeah.” Jake admitted, scrunching his nose in distaste.

            Edward tilted his head, “The principal is on his way over,” He said, “we’d best get to English, Bella, so you’re not involved.”

            Jake actually looked galled at that, “English? Who gives a shit about English? There’s finally something _fun_ going on.” He looks at the withering look being thrown his way by the vampire beside me and snorted, “Or has Eddie here decided you’re too delicate and fragile and precious for fun?”

            “Shut up, Jake.”

            “That’s a yes.” He huffs, “Lame.” He rubbed a hand through his hair, grimacing as if he hated the short, spiky style. I agreed, it was not _him_. He was long locks and silver earrings and an armful of tattoos that wound up to his shoulder and leather bracelets and an iron ring on every finger on the off-chance he’d get the opportunity to punch a ghost in the face…

            I rubbed a hand over my forehead and the image dissolved, leaving the gargantuan reality of Jacob standing before me.

            “We can be friends, Bells.” He said, all cheer and charm gone. “I was wrong before. The impossibility is _not_ being together.”

            “Jake…”

            “Come on, Bells. You know it as well as I do. There’s… something. Don’t tell me you don’t know it to your core. Being apart isn’t _right_ for us. Ever.” I was very aware of Edward’s eyes on me, his hand wrapped around me protectively… possessively.

            I looked at his face, and while I understood what Jake was saying, was trying to convey that we were family and we needed each other, something still pulled me to Edward. Something rebelled from the idea of defying him.

            “I don’t know, Jake…”

            “We’re not _this_.” He gestured to the world at large, trying desperately to convey something neither of us had the words for. “Don’t you feel it? This is fuckin’ window dressing. It’s not…Not…” He sighed, “Dammit!”

            “Jake,” I slipped out of Edward’s grasp and took the dangerous step to my best friend. My little brother. With Edward out of my immediate line of sight, the rest of the world seemed to shrink down to the two of us. He took a breath, his eyes big dark pools of unconditional love for the big sister he never had.

            I slipped my arms around his waist, my head reaching his sternum and he curled his massive frame around me, burning with his own supernatural heat.

            “I love you, Bells.” He said, “We’re family. And nothing can change that, we’ve been through too damn much together.”

            “What are you talking about?” I asked, looking straight up into his eyes.

            He huffed and it sounded almost like a sob, “I have no friggin’ idea. But tts true, isn’t it?  It’s crazy, completely around the damn bend, but it’s the realest thing I’ve ever felt. I don’t think being apart is an option.”

            “I know, babe.” The affectionate moniker slipped out like second language.

            Our moment was broken when the principal bustled self-importantly into the fray and Jake and I separated. Edward pulled me back into his orbit, guarding me almost jealously.

            “To class,” Mr. Green barked, glowering at the students like he couldn’t fathom why he’d become an educator.

            He rounded on Jake, “I don’t believe I know you,” He said, blustering and suspicious, “who are you?”

            “Scott Howard,” Jake deadpanned and Mr. Green clearly didn’t get it.

            “Well, Mr. Howard, this is private property, you’d best leave before I call the police.”

            Jake arched a single unimpressed eyebrow, clearly imagining Charlie coming down to the school to arrest him. Jake liked to live on the edge.

            “Go!” Green barked.

            “I’m goin’, I’m goin’” Jake swung a leg over his bike and the rumble when it started was like a thunderclap. He revved the bike twice grinning like a schoolboy as Mr. Green’s face purpled with rage before he tore off up the street, loud and wild.

            I felt part of myself go with him.


	6. Bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean wants answers, Bella wants action. Everyone is starting to lose their cool.

For many hours and days that pass ever soon  
the tides have caused the flame to dim  
At last the arm is straight, the hand to the loom  
Is this to end or just begin?

-Led Zepplin –

 

            “Wait,” Sam held up a placating hand, warm hazel eyes turning to his older brother, “You think Charlie’s hiding something?”

            “Yeah, Sammy,” Dean sighed, “Look, I don’t wanna believe it any more than you do, but you didn’t see the guy. He wouldn’t even say the word ‘vampire.’ It was like he was afraid to say it.” When his brother didn’t look convinced, Dean threw up his hands, “Look, I dunno, dude. It’s a feeling. I know Charlie, and he was acting super sketchy. Something in this town has him spooked. Just trust me?”

            Sam didn’t need to give Dean his patent ‘I-acknowledge-your-pain’ puppy eyes for the older Winchester to know that Sam didn’t believe this had nearly so much to do with Charlie as it did with Dean needing “closure.” In Dean’s experience, there was only one kind of closure a hunter ever got, and that it was the match they lit to burn your body.

            Sam cleared his throat awkwardly, his brows knit together, “Okay,” he said, glancing up at his big brother, “so… so we stay?”

            “No,” Dean answered, “I told Charlie we’d be gone by tomorrow.”

            “So, what do we do? It’s not like we can go the next town over,” Sam pointed out.

            “Why the hell not?”

            “Dean,” his little brother huffed out a mirthless laugh, “there _isn’t_ one. The nearest town is Port Angeles, and that’s about sixty miles from here.”

            That took the wind right out of Dean’s sails. With a place this geographically perfect, it was a wonder every monster in the book hadn’t picked this town clean ages ago.

            “So, we go back to Seattle?”

            Seattle was a hundred and forty miles east, and Dean didn’t want to be three hours out if something went down. He knew that Seattle was this vamp nest’s feeding ground, but the elder Winchester couldn’t shake the feeling that Forks held the answers. It was a lifetime of finely honed hunter’s instincts talking and he wasn’t about to ignore them.

            “Port Angeles it is,” Sam sighed redundantly, reading every single thought as it slid over his big brother’s face. “But we are going to need to go back to Seattle, the vamps there haven’t finished with the city by a long shot.”

***

           

            Edward followed a step behind me the whole way to the door of our shared Literature class, head bowed and arms swinging at his sides. Gone was the easy grace with which he usually carried himself, he looked ready to attack. His eyes were black as coal and burning furiously into the back of my head.

            Not that I had any intention of sitting through class. Not with the kind of fire that was burning low and kelvin-hot in my belly at Edward’s lies and manipulation. I rounded a corner into a deserted stairwell, not so much as flinching when Edward was suddenly _there_ before me.

            I felt whipcord tight and serrated as a KA-BAR blade, slicing through the tendons and meat of some fugly on a Midwestern back road on those nights when the only warmth in the air came from the flames of the grave you were burning….

            The black tar of Edward’s eyes made every thought I might have been having run for the hills but the anger stayed with me, meeting his icy countenance with something white-hot and familiar that I could barely give a name to.

            “You lied to me,” I hissed, crossing my arms over my chest and glaring at the vampire. In that moment, that was all Edward was to me; a vampire. Someone who didn’t trust me, didn’t believe in me, had no problem taking my power and my choices away from me and then smiling like I was supposed to thank him for his deceptions. Like I was supposed to be _grateful_.

            “Bella, you’re making a scene,” he chided, chin jutted defiantly. He took a looming step and stared down at me with obsidian eyes, “I was protecting you.”

            “Screw protecting me! You owe me an explanation, Edward.”

            “There is nothing to discuss!” it was the closest to shouting I had ever seen him get. His hands were fisted at his sides, his body angled towards mine like a barely caged animal. Like one wrong word, the smallest sign of weakness would be all it took to set him off.

            I found I didn’t care. Hell, part of me thrilled at the idea of pulling away his stoic mask and peeking at the nightmare underneath. He told me once that he was a monster, the bad guy, cursed. I wanted to see the disease. Especially if I was going to inherit it.

            “Victoria came gunning for me,” I growled, “she could have killed one of you, she could have killed _Charlie –_ ”

            “No one was ever in danger,” he insisted, “she never made it to the town. The altercation between Paul and Emmett was unfortunate, but no one was hurt and she never got near the town. You dad was safe, Bella. I took you out of town as a precaution.”

            “You instigated a fight between me and my dad, backed me into a corner, forced me on a plane and never once considered that I had the right to know why.” I corrected, acidly.

            Edward sighed, “You’re being unreasonable, Bella. You act as if it would have made any difference, being here or there. What difference would it have made? You can’t fight her, has it occurred to you that being tangible to Victoria might have put Charlie in more danger?”

            “My dad can take care of himself.” _And any one of you blood-sucking sons of bitches_ was a whisper in the back of my mind – the there-and-gone flash of a man in a brown leather bomber jacket swinging a double-barrel around to blow a fist-sized hole in some shag nasty with a mouth full of shark teeth. His dark hair curled behind his ears and sweeping across his brow as he moved with lethal grace and stood between the things that go bump in the night and the people they eat.

            I did, however, have to concede Edward’s point. My being around would have been too much a temptation for Victoria to resist. She was just crazy and vengeful enough to throw caution to the wind if there was even the smallest chance she might get to me before they got to her.

And she’d have torn my father in half to do it.

            “Okay.” I said, arms uncrossing and falling to my sides.

            “Okay?” Edward sounded almost hopeful.

            “Next time,” and I knew there would be a next time; Victoria was not going to stop until either she or I was dead, “you _will_ tell me what’s going on and you _will_ accept whatever course of action I decide is best for me.”

            Edward looked like he wanted to argue, but I didn’t wait to hear it. I turned and stalked back down the hall to Literature, caring not at all about what thoughts and opinions written across the expressions of my classmates. 

            I fell into my chair, glowering at the white board and the Robert Frost poem scrawled in my teacher’s untidy script. I didn’t speak when Edward sat down beside me. I didn’t speak much for the rest of the day.

~~~

            It was not turning out to be a good week. It seemed like every time I saw Charlie, he was glued to the Seattle news. People weren’t just turning up dead, anymore; some weren’t turning up at all. Eleven people had gone missing, another six had been found dead. Bodies were piling up with no more explanations than before. Even in the remote town of Forks, people were getting anxious.

            “Tell me you’re following this,” I said to Jake during one of our suddenly nightly phone conversations. Through the connection, I could hear Jake and his dad, Billy, were listening to the same broadcast that Charlie and I were.

            “If I were following any closer, it would demand a restraining order,” he assured, smirk audible. “What about you? The Addams family still putting it on the back burner?” There was naked derision in his voice, but it was softened by our new reconnection. Jake was no less furious about the Cullens – and particularly Edward – coming back to Forks than he had been before, but there was something different now.

            There was concern where there had once been jealousy. There was solidarity where there had once been dissonance. Jake was different that he had been before.

            What I didn’t want to think about was that so was I.  

            “What about the Pack?” I asked, “Isn’t saving people from vampires kinda in your job description?”

            Jake growled, “According to Sam, we exist to protect the tribe. Outsiders’ business is outsiders’ business.”

            “Charming…”

            “When are you coming by?” He asked abruptly, “I’ve got some stuff I want to show you.”

            It was at that exact moment that I felt an icy hand on the small of my back. Edward was looking at me expectantly, his eyebrows high on his forehead.

            “I dunno, Jake…”

            The eyebrows made a bid for his hair line.

            “Bells, come on. This is idiotic. Just tell the glittery asshat that you –”

            Edward took the phone from me and put the receiver to his ear, “That’ll do, mongrel” he said and then dropped the phone back into its cradle on the wall.

 

            In my dreams, I was with Jake. And I was working.

            “C’mon, Is,” Jake chided, “This is the closest thing to a vacation we have ever had!” He was right. We were investigating disappearances in a sea-coast Maine town in the middle of July. It was sunny and beautiful and we were in a hotel room that looked out onto the glittering Atlantic Ocean.

            “We’re on a job, Teen Wolf.” I didn’t look up from my laptop to see my brother roll his eyes.

            “All work and no play makes Bella a _very_ dull girl.”

            “Don’t call me _Bella_ ,” I tore my eyes away from the article in the York Weekly to glare at him. I hated that fucking name.

            Jake was hardly a teen anymore. He had rounded the corner of eighteen and stood an impressive six feet and seven inches of dark Quileute skin and athletic muscle. His arms were covered in ink, unobstructed by cloth thanks to the dark grey tank top he wore with black swimming trunks.

            “We’re not on a case _tonight_ , sis.” He said, “We can fight the forces of evil in the morning.” He smiled, wide and charming, and I found myself softening.

            “Besides,” he added, “I already told the boys we were taking the night off.”

            I sighed – more for show than real irritation – and slapped the lid of my computer closed. Jake was not about to not get his way and we both knew it.

Good thing I’d bought a bathing suit.

            He took my hand and led me down to the beach. The ocean stretched on forever under the clear blue sky and we picked our way through the people milling along the boardwalk and the beach, Jake head and shoulders and several ribs taller than the people around us, until I spotted two figures by the water tossing a football back and forth between each other. One had shaggy brown hair and was a good six-foot-three at the age of seventeen. He had dimples when he smiled – as he was doing right then - and hazel eyes set deep under a serious brow. The other was older, shorter and had hair several shades darker than honey cut short. His broad shoulders were reddening under the sun and his bare torso was miles and miles of beautiful, freckled, scarred skin that beaded with sweat.

            They were the two boys who plagued all my dreams recently, turning quickly into men.

            _He_ looked over and his eyes shone emerald in the sunlight when they caught mine. Full pink lips pulled back from white teeth in a smile and I felt something twist in my gut.

            “Oh god,” Jake sighed, “please, not the eye sex. I can’t take it.” He glared with patent little-brother disgust between me and _him_ and then jogged over to the youngest of us and scooped the football from his hands with the ease of a taller man.

            All three of my boys were drawing appreciative glances from the women around us and some of the men but none so many as the one I thought of as mine. He wore a gold pendant on a leather cord around his neck and in my dream, I knew it was the most precious thing he owned. His little brother had given it to his when they were children and nothing could coax it from its place above his heart.

             There was something dangerous about him. Jake had us all by sheer size and the younger one was all strictly-maintained muscle rippling over his torso but there was a belligerent, half-feral shine in those emerald-colored eyes that said _he_ could be as lethal as he was charming.

            I yanked my shirt, an oversized _Twisted Sister_ tee, softened and faded by a thousand runs through the wash over the years, and I didn’t miss the rise of pink on those sharp freckled cheek bones as I stripped down to a strappy black two-piece. The top part crossed over my chest and around to my back and crushed my small breasts up into cleavage.

            He smiled when I did. He handed me a beer and our hands brushed slightly. It was our game; looking but never touching. Touching but never lingering. Lingering but never kissing. Kissing but never fucking. It was the twelve-step dance of two emotionally stunted people who had been spinning in and out of each other’s orbit since we were ten years old.

            Days without monsters didn’t happen to us. By that night we’d be back in our own orbits, on the job and away again for an unknown amount of time. By the next morning, the two brothers would be in the wind. The day after that, Billy and Jake would be on the other side of the country. It would just be me and dad again, a two-man team in a 1971 Dodge Demon.

            It was bittersweet and inevitable and I let my fingers brush his for just a little longer than necessary.

            And then I played catch with my little brother.

           

            “There are seven of us, Bella.” Carlisle said the next day as I stood in the Cullen’s living room and tried not to lose my rapidly dwindling temper. “And with Alice on our side, I don’t think Victoria is going to catch us off guard.”

            “We’d never let anything happen to you, sweetheart,” his wife added, with a gentle and cold kiss to my brow, “Please don’t be anxious.”

            “I’m not anxious,” I insisted, “this is _not_ me being anxious.”

            “Bella, please,” Edward insisted, “it’s okay to be nervous about Victoria, but we have to stick to the plan.”

            I rubbed my fingertips over my temples and tried not to picture scenes from _Blade_.

            “You’re not actually _worried_ about this, are you?” Alice scoffed playfully, “I’m offended.”

            “You’re not listening,” I ground out as evenly as I could, “This is not about me. This is about Seattle. Jake thinks Victoria is involved, and I think she’s just crazy enough for him to be right.”

            “That’s highly unlikely, Bella.” Carlisle said with calm authority and absolute conviction. “Mad though she may be, even Victoria knows better than to attract the attention of the Vulturi.”

            “Crazy tends to imply reckless, guys.” I sighed.

            “And what difference would it make if it _was_ her?” Edward demanded, “If we’re going to go on nothing but the hunch of a _dog_ , what practical difference would it make?”

            “The difference,” I snapped, “is that it’s our fault. All those innocent people being ripped to shreds down there is a direct result of what we did. It’s our responsibility. You can’t just ignore that and keep pretending you’re the good guys!” I spun around and caught my boyfriend with a glare, “and I trust that _dog_ with my life.”

            A sort of pensive silence fell over the vampires at that and I felt Jasper less-than-subtly suck the tension out of the room and he took my anger with it as he used his empathic abilities to manipulate all our emotions. I knew he was doing it, but I just couldn’t hold on to my rage. It was annoying, but I couldn’t physically be annoyed.

            “Bella,” Esmee said, gentle and maternal and kind, “I think you should get some rest, honey. It’s been a long week for you.” She looked around at her husband and children, “we’ll talk more about this at another time. When everyone is calmer.”

            Emmett smiled wide and the dimples that dug into his cheeks near took my breath away with their familiarity, “I’m so glad Edward didn’t eat you, Bella! Everything is so much more _fun_ with you around.”

            Jasper’s abilities only lasted until Edward and I left the house. Apparently, the consensus was that I was just supposed to put all this out of my head. The vampires didn’t even want to talk about it. Hell with that.

            “That was out of line, Bella.” Edward said when we were out of earshot of his family. “You know how good Carlisle and Esmee are. How much they’ve done for us, for _you_. They didn’t deserve that.”

            I felt bad for blowing up at the Cullen parents. They were good people, really. But you know who the real victims were? All those poor bastards in Seattle who were being slaughtered in the streets by something the local authorities couldn’t begin to fight.

            Didn’t mean I didn’t feel like a jerk for what I’d said.

            “I’m sorry,” I sighed, “but I can’t think of anything but those bodies, those missing people. They have friends and families, too. And no one is doing anything to stop the thing that’s killing them.”

            Edward didn’t speak again until he dropped me off at my house. He was quiet that night when he snuck into my room.

            “I won’t let anything harm you, Bella.” He whispered as we lay in the darkness, me drifting off to the other world that my dreams had become, “Ever.”

            When I woke the next morning, he was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the positive feedback this story has recieved! I'm glad you're enjoying it!! 
> 
> Ink


	7. Pieces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bella sneaks off to La Push, Sam and Dean go to Seattle, SS Plot is finally under way.

Trust I seek and I find in you  
Every day for us something new  
Open mind for a different view  
And nothing else matters

-Metallica –

           

            I woke to the understanding that Edward was going to be away all day. He was going with the other Cullen men to feed. They called it hunting and I found that hilarious for some reason I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

            Back when he’d first returned from Italy, I’d had anxiety attacks about his being gone. I felt the same abandonment pains I’d felt back in those bleaks months before Jake had pulled me back from the abyss. The anxiety had dissipated in increments since the dreams had started and now I just felt a kind of guilty relief. Edward and I needed a couple of days to sort ourselves out.

            I rolled over to find a note resting on Edward’s pillow in his mechanically perfect script:

_I’ll be back before you even have a chance to miss me._

_Look after my heart – I left it with you._

           

I looked over at the alarm next to my bed; four twenty-three in the morning. Only about two hours earlier than I intended to wake. I had nothing but my morning shift at Newton Olympic Outfitters from seven to noon to look forward to all day and Alice had made sure to let me know in her most _significant tone_ that she’d be ‘hunting’ close to home… which basically meant that I was still being watched and that Edward being gone didn’t mean I got a weekend pass to Wolfville.

            I dragged myself from bed and into the shower, lingering under the hot water for longer than I usually had the opportunity. I wondered if vampires ever showered. I wondered if the bathroom in the Cullen house saw any use at all; after all, vampires don’t eat and everything they drink from blood gets recycled as nutrients to their bodies. They are predispositioned to physical near-perfection, so did it even occur to them to bathe? Was it purely recreational, or does vampire hair get greasy, too?

            What a stupid line of inquiry for half-four in the morning.

            I needed coffee.

            It didn’t really occur to me that I didn’t drink coffee.

            I turned the water off and dragged myself back to my room in a towel to dress for work. Newton’s wasn’t a uniform place, so I threw on a pair of faded but fitting jeans. I dug through my laundry basket, still full of clean clothes I’d neglected to put away the past few days and my fingers found a soft, faded black t-shirt about four sizes too big for me. One of dad’s must have gotten in on accident.

            I turned the soft material over in my hands and then nearly dropped it as a numb shock rolled all the way down my body and through my blood. Twisted Sister, softened and faded by a thousand runs through the wash over the years. I could almost feel the summer sun warming my skin and the grit of sand under my feet and smell the salt of the Atlantic Ocean.

            Without thinking I slipped it over my head. Looking in the mirror, I felt… different. Like I was pulling off a Halloween costume and the real me was emerging from under the corny pancake makeup.

            Without thinking too much about it, I dragged a chair and a box of small elastic bands over and spent an hour plaiting the dark hair on one side of my scalp into tight braids and arranging what was left over into a sweep on the opposite side. Like it had been in my dream when I’d caught my reflection in a window as Jake dragged me to the beach.

            It was a complicated do-up and I was surprised it came out well. I wasn’t one for messing with my hair, but I liked the effect. I looked somehow older and fiercer than I usually did. More ready to take on the world. The world, I reminded myself, being a morning shift in a back country sporting goods store.

            Working on auto-pilot I went to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee and a few pieces of toast.

            As the thin grey light of dawn began creeping through the rain-splattered windows, I wandered into the living room and turned on the television, hoping there would be no more news from Seattle.

            My dad’s journal, a leather-bound black book as old as I was, was lying on the table and open. Charlie never let that book out of his sight, it was the most important thing he owned. I had no idea what was in it, I’d never bothered to ask. I assumed it was just his work stuff. But now, I felt myself drawn over to the open pages, cautious and paranoid Charlie would come into the room at any second.

            The page was blank except for four lines in the middle of the page:

_Singer Salvage_

_Bobby Singer_

_Sioux Falls, South Dakota_

_605-552-8635_

            Why would my dad have a number for a salvage yard in a state that he’d – to the best of my knowledge – never been to? I couldn’t have said why I did it, but I grabbed the pad of sticky notes from beside the couch and jotted the information down before stuffing it in my pocket and grabbing my keys from the hook by the door.

            It was almost comically early, but it was better than wandering around the house for another forty five minutes. I figured I’d head to work and help Mike out with opening.

            When I got there five minutes later, Mike was sitting by the gun rack, fighting with a Winchester model 70 bolt action rifle that didn’t seem to want to come apart for him. He looked up at me as I approached, smiling when I sat down opposite him at the bench.

            “You’re an early bird, aren’t you?” He teased, “I like the hairdo.”

            “Thanks.” I fiddled with the pieces of metal in front of me. They were oddly reassuring in my hands.

            Mike started to say something, something about graduation plans and a trip to Seattle his mom was being unreasonable about because of the killings (I had to side with her on that one, only an idiot would go tooling around a serial killer/ vampire/ psychotic vampire with a grudge feeding ground) but I found myself drifting away from his voice.

            I picked up the base piece and examined it’s thin, skeletal countenance. _Think of it like the spine, Bells._ It was my dad’s voice in my head, the ghost of his large warm hands over mine as he guided my fumbling eleven-year-old fingers to the bolts and pipes and pieces that turn a gun from a few hunks of oddly-shaped metal and into a weapon. _You just have to put the pieces together like a puzzle._

I felt his warm breath on the top of my head as he guided my hands over the cold metal, mimicking in real life the phantom sensations of sliding pieces together bolt over pipe over latch over frame.  

            I turned every piece over in my hands and then slotted them along the gun’s skeleton until what emerged was a Walther P22 Target Military Pistol .22 LR. I set the gun down, and found Mike staring at me open-mouthed, the rifle forgotten in his hands.

            “What?”

            “How the hell did you do that?” Mike demanded, eyes wide. Truth was, I had no idea. Charlie never let me touch his guns and Renee had never owned one.

            Nevertheless, when I looked down a completely restored pistol was on the table in front of me.

            “You just put that back together in _military_ time, Bella.” He said as if that had some meaning to me, “forty-seven seconds,” he elaborated.

            “Oh…” I didn’t really know what to say to that. The actions felt natural. The sequence was like muscle memory. I hadn’t given it an instant of thought.

            Luckily, I was saved having to give some kind of explanation when Mike’s mom, the owner of Newton’s Sports, came through the door and looked at me with a mixture of surprise and guilty unease.

            “Bella,” her smile was soft but somewhat forced, “I was just about to call you. It doesn’t look like we’re going to be seeing a lot of business today…”

            My help wasn’t needed at the store.

            “Mom, she can clean the guns!” Mike piped up, “She’s _awesome_ at it. Can put a piece together twice as fast as I can!”

            “No,” I interjected, not wanting to be the cause of a family argument, “It’s cool. I’m just gonna study for finals.” I smiled, “really, it’s fine.”

            Mrs. Newton’s shoulders sagged with relief. She couldn’t really afford to expend any more payroll than she absolutely needed to and I didn’t feel like making things more difficult for her.

            “Thanks, Bella.” Her eyebrows crinkled together as she gave me a once-over, “You look good, today. The hair is very you.”

            I smiled and left the store, climbing into Elsa’s cab and looking out into the damp town. The rain was already letting up and there was even a chance of some actual sunlight later in the day.

            A day I had absolutely nothing to do on.

            A day when everyone was off doing their own thing.

            A day when no one was breathing down my friggin’ neck and cattle-prodding me onto their idea of the straight and narrow.

            I smirked as I turned the engine over and spun my truck onto the street, “Sorry Alice,” was all I said before shifting into second gear and slamming the gas pedal all the way up the empty streets.

            I had my dad’s box of cassettes in the passenger seat and I fumbled one into the player as I shot up the cracked country roads at fifty-five miles per hour, because that was the absolute fastest I could get the old lady to move.

            _Come on, feel the noise! Girls ROCK your boys! We’ll get wild, wild, wild…_

            The drums pounded through my blood and shook my speakers as I turned the music up as loud as it would go, cranking my windows down and bouncing my hands off the steering wheel in tandem with the rhythm of Quiet Riot.  

             It felt _good_. I felt the guitar electrify my blood, Kevin DuBrow’s sand paper vocals scratched over my skin and made me want to… I didn’t have words for the feelings raging inside me.

Let the world do its worst. Let Edward rage and Alice seethe. Let that ginger skank Victoria take her best fucking shot because here I am you blood-sucking sons of bitches.

            Follow the music, children of Hamelin, and kiss my ass.

            I skidded the truck to a stop in Jake’s driveway and practically threw myself out of the driver’s side as my friend came barreling out the front door.

            “I don’t fuckin’ believe it! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a 53 Chevy in desperate need of a tune-up?”

            “It’s a prison break, Teen Wolf.”

            He smiled, wide and honest and brighter than the sun, “excellent!”

            Billy, wheel-chair bound but smiling, appeared in the doorway and raised a hand up in greeting, “Hey, Bells. Welcome back.” It sounded like _welcome home_. It felt like it, too.

            “Tell me everything,” Jake said, “spare not a detail. Also, dude, get those speakers fixed. I couldn’t even hear you until you were a mile away.” His grin turned mischievous and I knew without a doubt that the boy would love nothing better than to put a set of club speakers in the back of my truck and crank the volume until Port Angeles could hear Bon Jovi.

            I laughed, it was so easy to do with Jake. He slung and arm over my shoulder and steered me off on no particular direction.

            “How long are you on shore leave from Castle Vlad?” he asked after a while but without the customary bitterness. Instead it was more like low-level annoyance and offense on my behalf.

            “Just today,” I sighed, “Edward is off for the day and my morning shift was cancelled so I just thought ‘screw it’ and floored it through the treaty line. He’ll be back tomorrow – hell, he’s probably back already – and I’m gonna get both barrels when I leave here.”

            All the humor evaporated from my friend in an instant. He seemed to get even bigger and his eyes turned fierce, “If he lays a hand on you, I’ll feed him his spine.”

             “He’s never touched me, Jake. He’s not going to start now.”

            “There is an arm full of scars and at least one hospital stay that says otherwise, Bells.” He looked pointedly down at the thin white lines that marred my right arm from elbow to wrist; a souvenir from my eighteenth birthday when Edward had shoved me out of the way of Jasper and right into a glass table. I’d lost count of how many stitches Carlisle had had to do.

            “That was an accident,” I protested.

            “Yeah, you ran into a door.” He scoffed, “I can’t believe you forgave him for that. For everything he did to you.”

            “Everything he did to me?” I repeated archly, looking my friend over for signs of the bitter, wounded boy I’d abandoned in the forest when I’d sided with Edward.

            “Yeah,” Jake said with scornful cheeriness, “like that one time after he got you involved in a dangerous secret world of the undead and then left you completely defenseless to it.”

“He left to protect me!”

            “Sure, right. After he got you on the worst side of a psychotic, vengeful skankpire. Because vampires don’t mate for life or anything. And Edward couldn’t possibly have guessed that you’d make friends with the Pack, and obviously Victoria would have gone after the easiest prey because that kind of temptation is just too much for that blood sucking bitch to resist so naturally abandoning you in the woods at night was the safest and most reasonable course of action… for your _safety._ Gosh, I wish someone loved _me_ that much!”

            Jake was practically dripping vitriol, his dark brows arched. I wanted to be angry, to protest. Before, I could have done just that. Would have, in fact, stood unyielding on the side of Edward and the Cullens. Even if I pretended to be impartial, I would have sided with them and chalked Jake’s words up to jealousy.

            But Jake was right. The same way dad had been right. Looking from the outside in, Edward was not cast in a particularly good light. Jake was family and my blind devotion to Edward had already leant itself to one betrayal of him before. I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

            Still, I had to try and be fair to everyone.

            “If I tell you the whole story, will you please drop the bitch face?”

            “Based on the content of said story, I promise nothing.” Nevertheless, he arranged his face into something more neutral as we wandered up the beach and took a seat on the old bleached oak tree that had washed up on the shore long before I’d started going there. Probably longer than I’d been alive.

            So, I told him. I spared no detail. I spilled my guts about seeing Edward when I was doing something dangerous, about the case of mistaken death when Alice had seen me jump off a cliff and then Edward had called and Jake had said Charlie was arranging a funeral, about Edward’s suicide attempt, about Alice bringing me to Italy to stop him, about the Vulturi, about their determination to see me changed into a vampire or else, and my voice trembled when I told him about the innocent people I hadn’t saved and the cutting, dismissive words Edward had said over their screams.

            I couldn’t look my friend in the eye as I finished.

            “You couldn’t have saved those people, Bells.” His voice was soft, his arm warm across my back as he pulled me to him. “There was nothing you could have done.”

            “I could have tried.”

            “You’d have gotten yourself killed.” There was not a shred of doubt in his voice, “And one day, we’ll find those bastards and we’ll make them pay wholesale for every drop of blood, I promise you. But you gotta focus on one fight at a time.”

            He kissed the top of my head, affectionate and soothing, before pulling back with a glint of satisfaction in his dark eyes, “So, Edward was one arrant beam of sunlight from reenacting Romeo and Juliet, huh?”

             “Yep.”

            “Don’t suppose the Vulturi are hip to the invention of body glitter, eh?”  

            I couldn’t help it, I laughed. It felt good to laugh, it wasn’t something I did much of anymore.

           

             

                        “Sam’s pissed at you, ya know,” Jake tossed out casually, not overly concerned with the opinions of his alpha. Sam Uley hated the vampires with a passion, I couldn’t imagine he was overly joyed at me for being the tether that bound them to this town.

            “I can imagine,” I said, looking out over the Pacific Ocean.

            “I don’t know if you can, Bells.” He sighed, his handsome features turning serious. Jake was too pale. His skin was Native dark, but under the grey sky he looked washed out, sickly almost. Nothing like the tanned, tall, lithely muscular man with his long hair tied in a low ponytail and inky black tattoos covering his arms who I knew in my dreams.

Jacob Black was beautiful.  I’d known that from the moment I’d first laid eyes on him when I moved to Forks. I’d seen it in his wide smile and dark eyes and open, friendly countenance. He was sweet, charming, and innocent in a way I’d never seen before. Jake was _good_ , right to the core.

I trusted Jake, in whatever form he took, with my life. I trusted him to be honest with me. To tell me the truth no matter how bad it was. To have my back in a fight and to let me have his.

“Explain it to me, then.” There was no animosity. I wasn’t offended by Sam’s anger, merely curious.

“It’s a long story,”

“I’ve got time,” I grimaced into the distance, “I’m not exactly tripping over myself to get back.”

Jake turned warm eyes to me, sitting so close I could feel the high heat of his body warm my shoulder, “He’s really going to be angry, isn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I said, “He’s gonna be furious.”

“Stay here, then,” he suggested brightly, “I’ll sleep on the couch, you can call Charlie, it’ll be like old times. I’ll order pizza!”

It was tempting. So damn tempting. But I sighed and leaned back, putting space between us, “I can’t do that. It’d just make things worse.” I forced a smile, “tell me the long story.”

As it turned out, not only had Sam disfigured his fiancé in a fit of rage, he’d also broken Emily’s cousin Leah’s heart when he’d broken of their engagement to be with Emily.

“Because of some magical wolf love bullshit.” I clarified.

“Imprinting, yes. And now that Leah’s in the Pack, it’s like a twenty-four/seven soap opera – which I’m not even the star of – going on in my head.”

“Because you also have some telepathic wolf bonding bullshit?”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but yeah.”

“And you can hear each other’s thoughts the way Edward can hear people’s thoughts?”

“Well, we don’t exactly have lips in Wolf form, you see,” Jake grinned behind the sarcasm.

I whistled, “That is some heavy shit.” I glanced at my friend, “So, Sam never would have turned if the vampires hadn’t moved to Forks. He never would have betrayed Leah for Emily, he never would have mauled Emily, he’d be married to Leah and all would be cool because he never would have been forced to choose Emily because of the imprinting. I can understand why he hates the vamps. But what does that have to do with me?”

Jake rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged, “He figures if anyone knows what it means to be screwed over by vampires, it’s you. You got caught up in their world and then just abandoned to it, defenseless. Their carelessness almost got you killed. And vampires mate for life, the vampires aren’t the only ones affected by that; the same way the Wolf isn’t the only one shackled by the chains of imprinting. Sam can’t even say that if he had a choice, it would have been Leah. He _belongs_ to Emily. Heart and soul, and for absolutely no reason other than some ‘magical wolf love bullshit’.”

I nodded, understanding.

“So, he feels betrayed by me blithely taking Edward back when he thinks I’m the one person in the world who should hate them as much as he does.”

“In a nut shell.” He said, as he stood from the tree and stretched, cracking kinks along his spine. “Now,” he said, “Let’s go. I have some stuff I need you to see.”

We walked together back to his house, his arm brushing mine every other step or so. It wasn’t fraught with tension the way it used to be; it was a natural, comforting thing that settled between us and warmed my chest.

 My watch told me I’d been there for two hours. Alice had most certainly sounded the alarms by then.

It was a thought which brought me back to my true purpose for coming here – other than to see my friend – the weight of responsibility that had settled heavy on my shoulders and the Cullen’s refusal to admit culpability for the lives that were being lost.

I needed to be sure. And Jake seemed like the only one willing to work with me.

“Jake, I’ve been backing you on the idea that Victoria might be involved in what’s going on in Seattle because I trust your judgement. But I need something solid to go on, man.”

Jake led my past his house and into the attached garage where we had shared the majority of our time together months ago. There were a pair of blankets covering motorcycle-shaped lumps and Jake’s new monster of a bike sat uncovered next to his VW Rabbit.

I followed him past all of that and to a low-lit back corner from where he produced a plain black binder and handed it to me. In the inside pocket was a map of Seattle, folded into a square and faded at the creases. It was marked with red and black ink at seemingly random places all over its surface.

 “The red is for everywhere people have turned up dead, the black is for everywhere people have gone missing,” he explained, “I’ve noticed a pattern.”

Jake had meticulously compiled the names and general information of every single person who had gone missing or died in the city in the past two months. Instead of organizing them chronologically, he seemed to put them together by age and a black and white printout of a girl who was probably fifteen smiled back at me with dimples that tugged at something familiar deep in my gut. Bree Tanner was a cute kid, and she probably wanted to go home now.

 “Age,” Jake said, “Everyone missing is between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. Everyone who has turned up dead is older than thirty. No one has made the connection yet that adults are being killed and kids are being taken.”

“Okay,” I said, “but how does this prove Victoria is behind it?”

Jake pointed to the map, “These look like attacks of convenience right? Different places, different age groups, different everything! Except, what if the kids aren’t just being taken, but turned? Victoria wants you, badly enough to try taking on a whole nest of vampires and a pack of Wolves _alone_. But maybe she’s getting smart. I think she’s taking these kids and building her own nest. Or, actually, her own army.

 “You told me about the advanced beauty factor of vampires. That ugly people will make average looking vamps and pretty people make Victoria’s Secret models… like that blonde babe.”

“Rosalie,” I said, trying not to sound as utterly sick as I suddenly felt.

“What if it’s the same for strength? Say you turned some feeble ninety year old woman? She would about equal the strength of an average twenty year old human, right? Maybe she’s choosing people in their prime to take on us and the Cullens.”

“Then why turn thirteen year olds?” I demanded, a little desperately, “They’re just _kids_!”

Jake’s mouth set in a grim line, “cannon fodder.”

“Shit.” The ground rose to meet me as I dropped onto my butt and stared at nothing.  

This was my fault. Those people, those _kids_. I was the reason it was happening. If James had just killed me, if Edward had just let me go, those people would never have died. It was all my fault.

I didn’t realize I was speaking out loud until strong arms gripped my shoulders and hauled me roughly to my feet. My friend’s dark eyes were scant inches from mine as he growled into my face, “Shut the fuck up, Issy. This is _not_ on you. This is on Victoria. She killed those people, not you. That’s what monsters _do._ And that is why we stop them, because that’s what _we_ do. Wearing that weight is not going to help you, it’s gonna drag you down. So we’re gonna find the bitch, and we’re gonna cut her head off and use it as a soccer ball.” Jake’s face was twisted in something that no one would confuse for a smile and bode Very Bad Things for the vampire we hunted.

We sat together in silence for a long time, sitting cross-legged, our kneecaps touching as we faced one another. I didn’t speak, not trusting myself enough to break the silence without screaming. Jake did not believe this was my fault, but there was no getting around it; this was my responsibility. My fight. And I couldn’t take on Victoria while human; it seemed as if the life I thought I wanted, the change I’d sought in Edward’s world, had shackled me to a fate I was no longer sure of.

If I was going to stop her, I couldn’t do it as a human.

***

            Sam and Dean checked into a room at the Port Angeles Super 8 and Sam immediately set about opening the half-dozen links Charlie had sent him via e-mail. He didn’t say much to his brother and his brother said even less in return.

            Hours passed in relative silence, Dean buried in regional vampire lore he’d gotten from an occult bookstore up the road and Sam wading through old police reports. The only sound was the clacking of computer keys, the rustling of pages and the occasional crinkling sigh of a bottle opening as the older Winchester indulged in beer after beer in his pursuit of a place where the memories this case was forcing him to confront stung just a little less.

            “Check this out,” Dean grunted, breaking the stillness of their research by shoving his book under his little brother’s nose, “The Cold Ones.”

            “Vampires?”  

            Dean snorted, “Barely.” He raised an eyebrow and dropped his voice to a mocking timbre, inviting his brother in on the joke. “‘The Cold Ones, an ancient vampire race so named for their ice cold and marble hard skin, are noted for their superhuman beauty. Devoid of the characteristics of classic vampire mythos, the Cold Ones are known for their seduction of humans through sensory manipulations such as smell and sight – appealing to their victim’s baser desires. A notable characteristic of the Cold Ones is the diamond-like shine of their pale white skin in direct sunlight.’” Dean pulled a face, “I don’t know about you, but I’m picturing Olivia Wilde in body glitter and snow shoes. Not exactly the stuff of nightmares.”

            “Devoid of classic vampire characteristics?” Sam said, latching onto a nerd thing, “Does that mean their weaknesses, too? Dead-man’s blood, decapitation?”

            Dean skimmed over the page, “it doesn’t say. Maybe they’re tougher than what we’re used to, he grinned, “but nothing’s unkillable.”

            Dean found himself thinking of those words as she had said them back when they were kids.

            _Nothing’s unkillable, Winchester._ Her dark hair spilling over her seventeen year old shoulders and her hazel eyes so bright in the South Dakota sunshine that for just a second they were as blue as the sky while she sat opposite him and sharpened a truly impressive array of knives. Her skin tanned at the height of summer and so smooth Dean couldn’t resist reaching out to cup his hand around the back of her neck, tangling his fingers in her hair and tilting her face up to his, knowing she’d forgive him for being an oil-smeared grease monkey and maybe even liking it a little…

            Dean was off the bed, across the room and out the door without a second look at his brother’s stricken expression. He needed air. He needed whiskey and a bloody fight and a warm body that didn’t remind him in any way of his dead friend’s.

            Charlie had been right, Dean had loved her. And Dean knew well enough by now that he destroyed the things he loved. His dad, his mom, his friends and even _Sam_ if there was any truth to the horrible burden John had dumped on his shoulders before he’d gone and fucking died.

            _Vampires_ , he remembered huffing a derisive laugh across the room from John, _gets funnier every time I hear it._  

            But it wasn’t funny. Swooping down and messing up Charlie’s life wasn’t funny. Seeing Issy’s face on every girl in that town wasn’t funny. The deep black sorrow swirling like a void in his chest wasn’t funny.

            Fucking Isabella Swan; stubborn, hot-headed brazen bitch who didn’t have it in her to run away from danger. In another life, she’d have been a cop or a soldier. She would have run into burning buildings, thrown herself in front of a bullet, stared into the abyss and screamed “come and get me, motherfuckers!” because that’s the kind of woman she was. The kind of Warrior she’d been. Dean had fallen in love with a woman out of legend. She had been his Eleanor, his Elizabeth.

            He’d never tell these things to another soul. Would never tell Sammy, had never told Issy. Now it was too late. Jake had been the only one who had understood. Dean hadn’t ever needed to say a word to make the younger boy understand.

            “You’d die for her,” Jake had stated once, utterly conversationally. “You’d kill for her, and you’d never say anything so saccharine because you know she’d kick your romcom ass for it.” Jake had been an incredible young man; A human with the heart and spirit of a Wolf. He had been utterly, unshakably loyal to the people he considered his pack. A damn good guy to have in a fight, an even better one to have a beer a game of pool with.

            Dean didn’t have friends. He had allies, he had enemies, he had Sammy and Bobby as the last vestiges of his broken, shredded family, but He’d had Issy and Jake.

            And then they were gone. The way Sammy had been gone when he’d chosen Stanford. The way John had been gone on his lifetime quest for revenge.

            The stalwart fact of Dean’s life was that the people he loved left him. They pulled away or they died. And Dean would always be alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has been sitting in my folders for a month. Sorry it took so long!


	8. Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bella puts her foot down, Jake sticks his neck out, and on a good day Dean gets to blow up a vampire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have gotten some absolutely wonderful reviews on this story, and I just wanted to say thank you. Writing this is a lot of fun and knowing that others are having as much fun as I am makes every chapter of Twilight I have to read worth it.

_I've got wild staring eyes_  
I've got a strong urge to fly   
But I've got nowhere to fly to 

-Pink Floyd-

 

            It was dark out by the time I got back to my house from La Push. With Jake, the hours just sort of bled together until it didn’t matter if I’d been there for a day or a week. He’d opened Elsa’s hood and administered the aforementioned tune-up while I sat on the ground and pretended I didn’t hear him snarl a “fuck off, guys” to the Pack inside his head.

            I headed into the living room and dad was in a terse argument with someone on the phone, “I already told the boys… no, Bobby, I’m serious…. Dammit, man, I’m not asking for the friggin’ moon here, Singer… Okay, yeah…. No this has nothing to do with… Yeah, I know about John, and I’m sorry but the boys - …” He suddenly realized I was in the vicinity and his expression turned startled and guilty. “I’ve gotta go,” He muttered before hanging up without so much as a goodbye.

            “What was all that about?” I asked, hanging my keys up on the hook beside Charlie’s.

            “Nothing,” he muttered, “How’s Jake?” Billy must have called him and told him where I was. I didn’t mind except that it was being used as a diversion. Dad had been arguing with someone, and he’d sounded genuinely pissed.

            Speaking of pissed, I was using my father as a diversion, too. I had no illusions that Edward wouldn’t be waiting for me in my room and that he wouldn’t be absolutely furious with me for taking off today.

            I was on the brink of a fight myself.

            “Jake’s Jake,” I said with enough fondness to make my dad grin, “He took care of the sticking gear in my truck and then beat me at Mario Cart.” I stretched and forced a yawn, “I’m gonna head to bed, daddy.”

            Dad nodded, “get some rest, Bells.” He turned the TV on as a slipped up the stairs to my room. As I closed the door, there was a chill in the room that told me the window was open and he was there. Because of course he was there.

            “Hi,” I said without turning to face him.

            Silence.

            “I’m not dead,” I offered into the gloom of my darkened bedroom.

            More silence.

            Finally, I turned and flicked on a single lamp. His face was an expressionless mask, the stoicism belied only by the furious black depths of his eyes. The only sound he made was a faint growl in the back of his throat. I was surprised when the sound resonated through me in a way I shouldn’t have liked but kind of did. It was a ‘party on the Titanic’ kind of thrill and not one I thought Edward would appreciate.

            He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as if I were the biggest headache he’d ever encountered. “Do you have any idea,” he whispered, his voice a rough scrape against the stillness of the air, “ _any_ idea how close I came to crossing that line today? How close I came to ripping that treaty to shreds and going to get you?” He opened his eyes again and they were livid. “Do you know what that would have meant?”

            I did; it would have meant a pointless feud being treated like World War III while Victoria tore a bloody path through lower Washington and nobody with the power to stop her cared.

            I said nothing. Edward seemed to misread my silence because he took a step toward me and braced his cold hands on my narrow shoulders, “If he’d done anything to hurt you –”

            “Enough,” I snapped, “Jake is no danger to me.” I didn’t say that the pup wasn’t dangerous, because he was. To Edward, he was dangerous. It Victoria, he was potentially lethal. But for me, he was a lifejacket and a parachute and an AK-47 with incendiary rounds all rolled into one. He was a bomb-bunker and a teddy bear.

            _There’s no place like home…_

            “You aren’t exactly the best judge of what is or isn’t dangerous, Bella.” He said it with levity but it rankled just the same.

            “I thought you would be gone longer,” I said in an admittedly clumsy attempt to change the subject as I eased out of his grip and sat on the bed.

            “When Alice saw you disappear, I came back.”

            I looked at him, really looked, for the first time and noticed the strain around his eyes and mouth. On anyone else, there would be brackets of stress like parenthesis around his full lips and creases marring the soft skin around his eyes. But vampire flesh did not yield the markings of human stress and so the cues of hunger and anxiety were the subtle slash of sly eyes as they looked at me as if the smallest part of his brain calculated the negative time it would take to have me by the neck and opening a vein in my tender flesh.

            And yet I knew, as surely as I knew it with Jake, that I was in no danger.

            “You shouldn’t have done that,” I admonished, losing a battle against my concern for his well-being, “You need to eat.”

            “I can wait.”

            “I can take care of myself.”

            “You can’t expect me to –”

            “Oh, yes I can! That’s exactly what I expect.”

            “This won’t happen again,” he growled.

            “No,” I agreed, “it won’t. Because next time you’re going to curb the douchery.”

            “There isn’t going to be a next time.”

            “Do I tell you who you’re allowed to hang out with?” I demanded, bounding up from the bed to glare at him.

            “I’m not risking my life!” Edward argued, arms crossed over his chest.

            “Neither am I!”

            “Bella, how exactly do Werewolves _not_ constitute a risk in your eyes?”

            I scoffed, “Oh, I don’t know! Maybe the same way I’m still dating a guy whose initial attraction to me was predicated upon wanting to _drink my blood_.”

            Too far, I realized, as Edward flinched like he’d been struck. Way too far. It was an invisible line. A line I had always known better than to cross. Edward fought every single day against the murderous impulse which had brought him onto my orbit. His love for me was a constant civil war between the part that saw me as precious and the part which saw me as prey.

            And I’d thrown that back in his face as a cheap shot because he wanted to protect me. No, I didn’t agree with the way he was trying to do it, but that didn’t make it okay.

            “I’m sorry.” I placed a hand on the unyielding flesh of his arm, “Edward, I’m sorry. That was a… That was the wrong thing to say.”

            The silenced stretched for another tense moment before those stone muscles relaxed and he exhaled a surprisingly human sigh. He nodded, “I’m sorry, too.” He pulled me into the circle of his arms and I went willingly. Whatever changes I felt in me, He was still Edward and I still loved him. I wasn’t sure I still understood that love, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still very real.

            “If anything had happened to you, somewhere I couldn’t get to you…”

            “But nothing did,” I insisted, “and nothing was going to.”

             “Bella…” it was a nearly-pained whisper against the top of my head, “They can’t control themselves. Their anger, their rage… they use it to fuel the Shift. It makes them good fighters, but it also makes them unpredictable.”

            “Not Jake.”

            “Why do you have so much faith in him, Bella?”

            “Because,” I looked into those golden eyes and said the only true thing I knew lately, “he’s family.”

           

            In my dream, I was with Jacob. And I was hurt.

            “Fuck, fuck, fuck Issy!” He laid me out on my back and pressed a wad of gauze to the bullet wound in my side. It hadn’t been a clean shot, the round was small-caliber and the lead was lodged in the muscle of my abdomen. It was a crap shot, luckily; missed all the major organs and arteries.

            I hadn’t expected a freaking revenant to pull a gun. That had been a surprise, yeah. It had been less of a surprise when Jacob had slapped its head clean off its shoulders like he was swatting a fly.

            “I’ve gotta dig out the round,” my brother said as he sterilized a pair of long, sharp tweezers with a lighter, “this is gonna suck for you, dude.” We were on the dusty floor of an abandoned mill amid the bloody remains of a revenant nest.

            Revenants are not zombies, much as they look like reanimated human corpses. Hell, they probably inspired the first Rimero film, but Revenants were born that way; bouncing baby nightmares that slithered out of their mother monster in their rotting six-foot glory.

            I felt blood rush hot and slick over my abdomen. Soaking my shirt and the top of my jeans. I could feel the bullet inside my skin, sending rippled of agony through me with every move I made. That was good, it meant I wasn’t going into shock yet. If I could stave that off long enough for Jake to get the bullet out, he could tape me up long enough to get me to a hospital.

            My brother had magic healing abilities. I didn’t.

            The bullet wasn’t going to kill me, but an infection like a bullet could cause might.

            He pulled a nip of Jameson whiskey from his First Aid kit in and cracked the metal twist cap off.

            “First things, first,” he said and put it in my blood-slick hand. I tipped half the fifty milliliter bottle down my throat. In our line of work, you got used to Viking surgery and I had enough gashes stitched with upholstery thread and dental floss to know when to keep my wits and when to dull the edge.

            I passed the bottle back with a groan and Jake stuffed a folded Ace bandage in my mouth before he swung his legs over my hips and settled on my thighs to keep me pinned.

            I bit dutifully on the elastic-tasting cloth as he muttered an apology and splashed the alcohol on the wound. I thrashed under his weight from the god-awful sting of it, choking on the pain as the bullet rolled under my skin. Dark was bleeding into my vision and Jake put the hand not holding the tweezers on my shoulder to comfort and restrain as he dug through the wound.

            “I’ve almost got it, you’re alright, hang on, hang on, almost there, stay with me….” It was a string of half-mumbled reassurances meant more for Jake than for me. His voice shook, but his hands were rock-steady as he finally extracted the bullet with a small victorious flourish and pinched the wound closed with super-adhesive butterfly sutures. They wouldn’t hold long, but long enough to get me to a real doctor.

            Normally we’d avoid hospitals at all costs, but I was going to need shots for this and not even B… not even Bob…. Not even our usual channels would have the stuff I would need in a pinch.

              _This was my life_.

Jake pulled me to my feet and supported most of my weight as we scrambled out of the old mill and back to my 1973 Chevy Nova.

_This was my life._

Jake dug my keys out of my jacket pocket as he settled me into the passenger seat of my 1953 Chevy pickup.

_This was my life._

Edward pulled the truck into reverse, his eyes flashing black as his gaze slid to the free-flowing blood from the many gashes that marred my arm from where he’d thrown me into that damned coffee table.

_This was my life._

Edward’s 1967 Chevy Impala sped toward Seattle and Pink Floyd played softly from the speakers. His green eyes flashed mischief and the dark sprinkle of freckles across his nose and cheeks stood in stark relief in the dusky Midwestern sunset.

“Issy….”

“Bella…”

This is my life.

           

             “So get this,” Jake sat on my couch with his feet on the coffee table and my laptop on his thighs. He popped an M&M into his mouth, wiped his fingers on his oil-stained jean and resumed his typing. Every day that I came home from school the past week, Jake had been there. Laughing with my dad or watching the latest developments from Seattle with hard eyes and pinched lips. Since my Great Escape impression the weekend before, Jake seemed to realize his mere scent in the proximity of me was enough to set Edward’s teeth on edge and he was using it to full effect.

            We’d decided we needed information, which was difficult to get when we had no idea what to even begin looking for. I was determined to prove that Victoria was behind the killings and to convince the Cullens that it was our responsibility. Jake just wanted his pack to, and I quote, “get off their lazy, smug, complacent, furry asses and _do something_ instead of saying it’s not their problem and going back to lick their own balls!”

            It wasn’t a dearth of information that was turning out to be the problem, but a glut of it. Merely typing in “vampire” was more likely to lead to _Buffy_ forums and fetish sites than actual information.

            The problem was, everyone was agreed that the killings were being done by a vampire – it was the only thing everyone agreed on. But no one wanted to step up to bat. The Cullens were happy to wait for the Vulturi to step in – which was ironic, considering how badly it would turn for everyone should they show up and find I haven’t been turned into a vampire.

            Yet.

            Edward insisted that their main priority was Victoria – again, ironically – and the threat of her coming back to Forks to finish what she started.

            What, if everyone were being very honest, _we_ started.

            We’d been chasing our tails looking for solid evidence, made nearly impossible by even Jake putting his foot down against the idea of us going to Seattle to investigate.

            So far, we were batting nada.

            “Get what?” I asked, flipping through one of the many old and expensive books on vampire lore and mythology that I’d run down a good portion of my savings purchasing off Amazon.

            A few of them weren’t in English and at that moment, I had a tome in one hand and a German-English dictionary in the other.

            “So, all I got on the Vulturi was some Italian folk lore that doesn’t tell us anything new. Vamp royalty, big secret, turned Claudia into ash that one time…” We were veering away from lore and into a Tom Cruise film and a shot him a look that let him know it.

            “Don’t eyeball me, brat, I’m really not that far off. The nest from _Interview_ was practically based off these guys. And from what I’ve been reading, Anne Rice may have slipped a middle finger into her writing because the thing about Dead-Man’s Blood has come up almost universally as blood-sucker toxin.”

            “Are you saying that vampires can be _poisoned_?”

            Jake grinned as he scooped up a handful of chocolate candies, “I think so, yeah.”

            It was climbing up on nine o’clock and I bid Jake goodnight at the door as he left, assuring him I’d be at his house on Saturday morning. Edward was going to make up for his short-cut hunting trip the week before and as far as I was concerned, the issue of where I was or wasn’t going to spend my time had been well and truly settled.

***

            “Dean, down!” The older Winchester hit the ground as gunfire exploded above his head. The sawed-off, like the Desert Eagle and the Glock 50 and the Colt 45 had done exactly dick to so much as slow the son of a bitch down.

            These vampires were fast, like Rugaru on crack fast, and so far everything they’d thrown at it had amounted to exactly dick.

            They hadn’t found the nest, but the Winchesters had managed to track one of the vampires, a handsome boy with deep red eyes and skin like marble, to a warehouse on the far-side of Seattle, out a way from the center of the city which had served as the primary hunting ground.

            It had taken two days to track down one vampire and were using it to more or less test Sam’s theories as to this species’ vulnerabilities.

            Which, as it turned out, there didn’t seem to by many of.

            Which was just buckets of friggin’ awesome, Dean though bitterly as he lurched to his feet and was sent flying into a support beam for his trouble. He wasn’t a stranger to being thrown around like a ragdoll by demons, ghosts or fuckall and sundry of the paranormal and fugly.

            But the fact that it was some prepubescent glittery fangbanger with delusions of badass (okay, maybe less delusions than straight-up badass) set the hunter’s teeth to grind.

            Oh yeah, he was gonna curb-stomp junior here.

            As the vampire advanced on Sammy quicker than his vision could track, Dean scrambled to a can of gasoline about ten feet away. The only hope the boys had seen so far was when the Desert Eagle, fired at point-blank range had caused a series of cracks – like fissures on the façade of a porcelain doll - along the vampire’s skin where the bullet impacted at the center if it’s forehead.

            It was a tough sonofabitch, Dean thought grudgingly, but

_nothing’s unkillable, Winchester._

Dean grabbed the gasoline, and made for the blood sucking asshat with it as the fucker advanced, predatory and smug and confident, towards Sam.

Overconfident.

_Nothing’s unkillable_.

Sam fired off another shot into the vamp’s slowly advancing chest, the buckshot doing nothing more than pissing the bastard off, when Dean upended the can of petrol over the smug little bastard’s head and set it to light with the salt-and-burn zippo in his pocket.

The vamp went up like tinder and didn’t slow down for a second as it did. It rounded on Dean who had his Eagle up and pointed between the bloodsucker’s eyes with the speed and accuracy of true-fucking-love. He pulled the trigger, running high on instinct and adrenaline and maybe a little bit of suicidal disregard for the consequences of failure as the vampire’s skin cracked neatly under the force of the impact and the flames seemed to be sucked _underneath_ the vamp’s skin.

Finally, after too long in Dean’s opinion, the blood-sucking douche started screaming.

Glowing red lines lit up under the vamp’s skin, like an explosion seeking out oxygen, and Sam pulled his brother back several feet as the vampire’s shrieks of pain and rage reached a crescendo and it spit garbled curses at the brothers.

“My maker… she’ll… find you…” the creature said as it fell to its knees, red eyes glowing with the fire licking its way up on and under its skin.

Dean, eyes hard and lip curled into an expression no sane person would call a smile, took a step toward the burning, dying vampire and said, “I’m counting on it.”

He didn’t flinch as the vampire burned up from within and came apart with the sound like a building being demolished.

_Nothing’s unkillable, Winchester._

 

            “Sooo….” Sam had been uncharacteristically reserved during their drive back to Port Angeles, giving off waves of concern and sending out sharing-and-caring vibes that Dean had gamely ignored as he’d switched the radio over to FM and cranked the first digestible song that came on – Pink Floyd – and floored it down the interstate.

            Now that they’d gotten back to the Super Eight they temporarily called home, Sam seemed determined to do that one thing Dean just wished he wouldn’t do; _talk about it._

            Back when they had visited their mother’s grave and Dean had stumbled (desperately) onto a case, Sam had seen fit to let him know that he’d left crazy and terrifying in the rearview since their dad’s death. And as much as Dean hadn’t wanted to admit it, the guilt – over John’s sacrifice and the final burden he’d dropped onto Dean’s shoulders about Sam – had been eating its way right through him.

            He thought he’d buried most of it. He thought that hunting the demon, figuring out Sam’s visions, finding answers and cases and shoving down the rage and the pain and the worthlessness and drowning it in Hunter’s Helper had been mostly effective against his own reluctance to look too closely in the mirror these days,

            And then this case had reared its damned head and hit the older Winchester in the gut with the second great loss of his life, after his mom.

            And Sam wanted to have a friggin’ heart-to-heart about it.

            Jesus Chrysler.

            Sam seemed to sense his brother vibing him because he cleared his throat awkwardly and switched tracks, “he mentioned his maker,” the taller brother said.

            “Said ‘she,’” Dean agreed.

            “So, what? You think it could be one vampire building a nest in Seattle rather than a nest that moved in?”

            “If the people who haven’t turned up dead have been changed, that would make a pretty big nest.”

            Sam nodded, “fifteen missing, twelve dead.”

            “Fifteen is a huge number for vampires, isn’t it?” Dean flipped through John’s journal, “Aren’t most nests five or six at the most?”

            “Yeah.”

            “If it’s one vampire, why would _she_ build a nest that big? And how does this tie back to Forks?”

            “Maybe the vampire that had killed those people in Forks moved down to Seattle?” Sam suggested.

            “But Charlie said that vampire was taken care of.” Dean argued.

            “Yeah, but you said he was acting strange. Maybe he killed the vamp’s nest and she went to Seattle to rebuild?”

            Dean nodded, “but vampires are close-knit. Their packs are like their family. If Charlie and Billy ganked the vamps up in Forks, the surviving bitchpire is gonna want payback.”

            Sam huffed a sigh, “We need to find this nest.”


	9. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bella doesn't like being kidnapped, Edward doesn't like to listen and Rosalie might be a real girl afterall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EmoXChick123456 bookmarked this story under "Holy erffing crap McCrap ton! WHY IS THERE NOT MORE?!" and how could I refuse? Here's looking at you, kid ;)

 

_Do with me what you will_

_Break the spell, take your fill_

_On and on we rode the storm_

_The flame has died, and the fire has gone_

-Def Leppard

 

            In retrospect, I really should have known better than to believe Edward was just going to trust my judgement. Because what kind of relationship would _that_ be?

            When I got out of my afternoon shift at Newton’s on Thursday night, finding Alice waiting for me in Edward’s Volvo didn’t initially ping any warning bells. I climbed into a car that rattled on its frame as the petit vampire did her level best to blow out her brother’s speakers with some alternative modern crap that was peppy and angsty and doomed to be stuck in my head for the rest of the night.

            “Alice!” I shouted, “Where’s Edward?”

            She hit the locks, dropped pedal to the metal and then turned the volume down to a less ear-splitting decibel, “They left early.”

            “Oh,” I expected disappointment to settle in my chest and was a little surprised when I found myself mostly ambivalent toward the news. Edward needed to hunt and I mostly just needed a shower. Mike had had me elbow deep in gun oil all afternoon and while the residue was oddly comforting on my skin, I smelled like an iron works factory.

            “All the boys went, and we’re having a slumber party!” she announced in a kind of trilling sing-song that grated on my nerves in a way Alice never had before.

            Then again, my sudden homicidal fury stemmed less from Alice’s lilting voice and more from the rising suspicion that Edward’s hand had played in this sudden need of Alice’s to braid hair and watch Molly Ringwald movies.

            “Aren’t you excited?” she crowed, and there was nothing false in it. Probably because she saw nothing wrong with this scenario at all.

            I leveled a completely flat gaze at her, one that I hoped conveyed how excited I really was not. Not excited and not fucking amused. “You’re kidnapping me, aren’t you?”

            “Yep.” She laughed, “Until Saturday. Esme cleared it with Charlie; you’re staying two nights and I’ll drive you back and forth from school.”

            I continued to stare and the look on my face would have exploded wood.

            “Sorry,” Alice said, undaunted, “he paid me off.”

            “With what?” I demanded. I at least wanted to know what my freedom cost these days.

            “An exact copy of the Porsche I stole in Italy,” she sighed blissfully, “I can’t drive it in Forks, but if you want, we could see how long it takes to get from here to Los Angeles. I bet I could have us back by midnight!”

            I grit my teeth in something no sane person would mistake for a smile, “No thanks. If I’m gonna die, it’s not going to be in some puss-yellow, piece of shit, foreign eyesore.” That shut her up.

            Alice floored it to the Cullen house, winding too fast – always too fast – up the empty back roads.

 

            “ _Too fast?” He’d asked me, green eyes alight as he broke 120 mph on the Arizona straight and AC/DC played from the restored cassette deck._

_“She can take it!” I assured, slipping my hand out the passenger side window and stroking the dark purple gloss finish. We’d gotten her finished a week early and it seemed only right to break my baby in properly._

_How long would it take to get from South Dakota to the Atlantic Ocean under ideal circumstances, we’d wondered, his grease-streaked hands closing the hood definitively for the last time and painting streaks over my skin and he cupped the back of my neck, warm lips closing closer._

_“Tradition,” he’d smirked and we’d both known it was a lie, “for luck.”_

_Circumstances hadn’t been ideal…_

_We’d gotten arrested…_

_It had been…_

_Perfect._

What?

I jerked as the Volvo slammed to a stop, my thoughts slipping away like so much water through cupped fingers. Music and full lips and a warmth low in my belly and shooting through my heart. The unyielding sunshine browning my skin and reddening his. Freckles like constellations mapping perfect beauty on a face that was made to break hearts.

What?

No.

Nothing.

Alice hopped gracefully out of the driver’s seat and went to stroke her hands along the yellow Porsche that sat between Emmett’s Jeep and Rosalie’s red convertible. “Don’t listen to grumpy Bella,” she cooed at the damned thing, “you’re gorgeous.”

I think if I rolled my eyes any harder, they might actually have fallen out of my head, “He gave you that for two days of holding me prisoner?”

Alice made a face that was incredibly telling.

I felt white hot rage like I’d felt when Jake had shown up and revealed Edward’s lies to me, “It’s for every time he’s gone, isn’t it?” I thought my voice did an admirable job of not shaking with the swelling, ugly _thing_ squirming in my guts. I clenched fists around numb fingers, every instinct telling me to take a swing. At Alice, at her nightmare import, at the wall, I wasn’t about to be picky.

I turned and put my everything into slamming the door of the Volvo, feeling no small amount of satisfaction when spider cracks wound their way up the passenger window. If Edward didn’t like it, he could bill me. And then I could laugh in his face and call it restitution for two counts of molestation against my truck.

“Bella,” Alice admonished with something like surprise finally creeping into her musical voice.

“Save it,” I snapped and then sighed, feeling myself sagging slightly. “Alice, can really not see how psychotically controlling this is?”

“Not really,” she sniffed and it had my hackles back up instantly, “You don’t seem to grasp how dangerous a young werewolf can be. Especially when I can’t see them. Edward has no way to know if you’re safe, and you shouldn’t be so reckless.”

I felt my jaw actually drop at that, “Okay!” I practically shouted, “putting aside the mind-boggling hypocrisy of that statement for just a second, absolutely none of that is Edward’s call. And it certainly isn’t yours!”

“Bella, you’re being unreasonable again.” She said as if she were corralling a small child during a tantrum.

Which, considering our relative ages and the Cullen unwillingness to listen to a word I had to say about my own safety, was probably exactly how she saw me.

Bitch.

I followed her into the house like a five-foot-seven thundercloud. I glowered at everything and anyone who came into my line of sight and said nothing for a good three hours. Esme had brought Italian food all the way from Port Angeles and I ate – mostly because I was hungry but partially because I was the only one inclined to do so in the house and it felt like a dividing line. I was human. I ate spaghetti. I dipped buttery garlic rolls into the sauce and ate those, too. I was wholly different from the women in my company and every bite felt like defiance of their very species.

It was bitter and petty and a part of me felt guilty for the private thoughts that accompanied such an act, but I was feeling pretty bitter and very petty right at that moment.

Alice suggested a pedicure and I’d have refused even on my most compliant night. I did, however, watch _Pretty in Pink_ with her. Rosalie and Esme joined us, quiet and pleasant in the background as I oscillated between a raw kind of amusement and low-simmering anger.

I was at a vampire slumber party.

Gets funnier every time I hear it.

“How late do you want to stay up?” Alice asked as the movie and ended and she pulled it out of the DVD player.

“I don’t,” I said simply, “we have school tomorrow.” Not that I expected I’d do much sleeping that night, but what I really wanted was some time alone to be pissed in peace without having to run my temper by my manners.

She pouted.

“Where am I supposed to sleep?” I eyed up the couch that Rosalie and Esme had vacated, it was a little short.

“You’re sleeping in Edward’s room,” she answered as if that should have been my first thought.

Edward’s room consisted of about nine million CDs and a long leather sofa. It wasn’t the worst place to sleep in a pinch, gods knew I had slept in worse….

Had I?

 “I need my things,” I said, “And a shower. Do you guys even use the water heater?” I thought back to my own shower musings and realized that it was one question I was about to have answered, at least.

“Of course we do!” Alice laughed, and I realized in that moment how tense she’d been all night. So, not as nonchalant in the face of my anger as she’d pretended. “Edward’s got his own bathroom. Your overnight bag is in there.”

She smiled and I felt myself respond in kind. No matter what I was feeling about Edward and Jacob and vampires and werewolves, Alice was a friend. And underneath everything else, her heart was in the right place.

I sighed, that left one – two – last things.

“I’m guessing you didn’t pack my cell phone.” If I was going to hold someone captive, I wouldn’t leave them their phone.

“I thought you had it with you.” It had been under my pillow, I couldn’t really fault her for not checking.

“Doesn’t matter. I need to use yours.”

“Charlie knows where you are,” she hedged.

“You know I’m not calling Charlie. But Jake deserves to hear this from me or he’s gonna pop a blood vessel.”

“Bella,” she deliberated, “I don’t know about this…”

“Dude, come on!”

Alice sighed and handed me her mobile, “he didn’t specifically prohibit this,” she reasoned, more with herself than me.

“He’s a giver,” I said with not an inconsiderable bite as I took the phone and slipped into the hallway. I dialed Jake’s home phone and he picked up on the second ring.

“Black’s Cannibal Kitchen!” he greeted jovially, “You kill ‘em, we grill ‘em! Satisfaction guaranteed or we’ll eat you, too.”

“I’d like to place an order for a smartass Teen Wolf,” I answered, “not nearly as rare as it probably should be.”

“Dude!” He snapped indignantly, “I was just at Charlie’s. He said you’re holed up in Castle Vlad for the weekend. What the fuck, Swan?”

“Yeah, ‘bout that…” I sighed, “Don’t get mange or anything, but I’m sort of being held hostage by the Brides of Dracula for the weekend.”

“We heard that!” Came Rosalie’s waspish tones from down the hall.

“You were supposed to!” I yelled back.

“That blood-slurping douche!” Jake growled, “I thought he was going to frolic his glittery ass with the deer this weekend. What, did he lock you in his coffin?”

“No, just with his crappy indie rock collection.”

“A fate worse than death,” my friend agreed but the levity was forced. Jake was furious, and it lit a new fuse in my guts. It was one thing to mess with me, but my brother was another matter entirely. Edward had no problem using me to hurt Jacob. He kept us apart and at that moment, I didn’t really feel like being fair about it anymore. He kept me from _Jake_. If I’d kept him locked up away from his family, he’d lose his friggin’ mind, and yet he thought it was perfectly fine to do it to me!

Fucking, _fucking_ vampire!

I didn’t realize I’d let that rage leak over the phone line, breath ragged in my chest and puffing across the sound waves until Jake practically barked my name.

“Issy!”

“What?” I snapped.

“Say the word, and I’ll come get you.” He seemed a little too eager, the part of him that was Pack spoiling for a fight with the Vampires, though I noticed he hadn’t dropped into the once-automatic plural.

“No,” I said, “Though it’s damn tempting. I’m just gonna get some sleep and plot the most strategic way to relieve a vampire of his testicles.”

“Alright,” he hedged, “Call me soon. If they let you, that is.” He hung up without ceremony and I found myself dialing a second number as Alice appeared by my side. She glanced at the number and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t think he has his phone on him.”

“Oh, I’m going to leave him a message.”

The phone rang half a dozen times before his voice mail caught the call.

_Please leave a message_

_BEEEEEEEEEEP_

“You controlling, conceited, sanctimonious, blood-sucking bastard!” I growled into the receiver, “This is a new low, even for you. When you get back, we’re going to have a talk about the blooming limitations of this relationship, you son of a bitch.” I caught Alice’s shocked expression as I hissed into the phone, “this was a hard god damned line, Edward. And you crossed it.”

I snapped the flip phone closed and handed it back to her, with a very tight smile. “Maybe that’ll get through to him,” I mused pleasantly.

A small, almost approving, grin worked its way onto her lovely face, “this hostage stuff is kinda fun!”

“Happy to amuse,” I acknowledged wryly, “I need a shower. And then sleep, I think.”

I opened the door to Edward’s room and was surprised at the rearranged furniture. The couch had been pushed far back to accommodate the king-sized four-post bed that suddenly dominated the majority of the room.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The coverlet was a dull gold that matched the thick carpeting of Edward’s floor and was slightly darker than the pale, pale gold of his room’s walls. It was like walking into a pirate trove. The frame was intricate black iron adorned with sculpted roses and vines that wound up the delicate posts and formed a lattice overhead which was draped with – you guessed it – pale gold fabric. It was a gorgeous bed, exactly the kind of thing I’d like if I liked that sort of thing.

            As it turned out, I didn’t.

My pajamas, a pair of shorts and a black tank top, were folded on the pillow.

            “You didn’t think he’d make you sleep on the couch, did you?” Alice asked, almost concerned.

            Actually, I had. And, in a way, this made it so much worse. The room had been rearranged, the bed ordered and assembled. This had been planned. I could almost understand a spur-of-the-moment freak-out, maybe seeing Alice’s Porsche at a dealership and bringing it home with a half-baked scheme to hold me for the weekend. But this bed was evidence that this was coldly, deliberately planned.

            Edward had sat down, made a decision about my life, and seen it through with no consideration whatsoever as to what it might do to me.

            A hard, painful lump formed in my throat and I found I couldn’t look too hard at that bed without feeling slightly nauseas.

            “I’ll give you some privacy,” Alice said, her voice surprisingly soft, surprisingly understanding, as she beat a retreat to the door. “See you in the morning.”

            I turned the shower as hot as I could take it, scrubbing oil and anger from my skin, wiping away the few angry tears that made their way past my defenses and slid down my cheeks. I couldn’t help the tremble in my hands or the way my breath caught just a little too rough in my throat and I hoped the beat of the water masked the evidence of my lost composure.

            Almost spitefully, I tried to summon the dulled images of my dreams to pull strength from the version of me in my clearly overworked imagination. Not that it was a happy fantasy; not at all. That life was terrifying, bloody, difficult and probably very short.

  _Every town, every school, every damn time it was the same thing. People looked at me differently. I didn’t belong in their shiny worlds, and the irony was that I did what I did so that they’d never have to know that their worlds were so shiny because I didn’t belong in them. I protected people who had no qualms about calling me a freak._

_There was always, without fail, one puffed up douchebag in every school who thought I should take his attention and be grateful. Always big, always generically handsome, and always inclined to get violent when I didn’t give him what he wanted. There were three schools I’d been expelled from for sticking a knife in a non-vital part of some generic jerk who thought he had some kind of right to me._

_It said something about my life that these incidents were almost relaxing. Like picking low-hanging fruit._

_Dad didn’t find it funny, but dad – nor Jake nor the boys – understood what it meant to be a woman doing the job. The men in my life were big, strong, well-trained and that earned them respect. I was small, fast, well-trained and that made me a target…_

The water was starting to go tepid before I turned it off. I brushed my teeth, put my long dark hair in a braid, put on my sleep clothes and then yanked the gold comforter and a pillow off that ridiculous bed and dragged them to Edward’s sofa.

I had no interest in sleeping in his gilded cage.

The majority of one wall in Edward’s room was taken up with shelves of hundreds of CDs. There was every genre imaginable and a few I wish I’d never heard of. He had everything from Slipknot to Five Seconds of Summer to Buddy Holly and back again. It took almost the whole length of the wall before I found an album of something my dad would listen to.

A thick orange case with four disks inside; Led Zeppelin box set. I put in the first disk and flipped through until I found a softer tempo than those before. A song called _Ramble On_ that reminded me of the rumble of an engine underneath me and sweet autumn air against my face. It reminded me of open roads I’d never travelled and a life I’d never lived.

I laid down on the couch, arm behind my head and stared at the plain white ceiling. There is something inherently uncomfortable about sleepovers. The feeling of being out of place - even in a place that was familiar in the light of day, it was made alien and foreboding when you were expected to sleep there. Maybe it was the feeling of vulnerability that comes with letting your guard down in a place that wasn’t your own, I didn’t know. I only knew that sleep was probably going to evade me that night.

I was pulled from my thoughts by a soft knock on the door. The music was soft and low on the other side of Edward’s room and I tried not to sigh as I asked, “what is it, Alice?” without raising my voice. I counted on her supernatural hearing and was surprised when the door opened and it was Rosalie, not Alice who poked her lovely head into the room.

“It’s me,” she announced with something like awkwardness, “Can we talk?”

I sat up and nodded. Rosalie didn’t like me, she never had and she’d never made a secret of that fact. Of all the Cullens, of the kind and decent family who had welcomed me into their fold, Rosalie was a scowling exception.

And hell, I kind of respected her for it. I hadn’t exactly made her life easy since I’d shown up and I couldn’t fault her for resenting a presence that put the people she loved in danger, from other vampires, from werewolves, and from a mortal population who could turn on them in a second if they learned the truth.

“Yeah,” I said, my curiosity getting the best of me, “Come on in.”

Rosalie slipped into the dark room and flipped on the desk lamp, bathing the room in soft light. She looked from me to the abandoned bed monstrosity and the smirk on her lips was an expression of mirth I’d never seen on her before.

“I told him his little stunt wouldn’t be well-received, but he wouldn’t listen.” Her amber gaze slid sideways to me, “He never does, about you.”

I said nothing, instead plucking absently at the comforter around my feet. My knees were drawn up to my chest as I leaned against the back of the couch, and I wasn’t sure if I was angling towards the vampire or away from her. I used to fret over her opinion of me, but these days, I respected her choice to make her own decisions about the people in her life.

God knows I envied it.

“Can we talk for a few minutes?” She didn’t ask if she’d woken me, I figured vampire hearing was good enough to pick up on that.

“Sure.”

She looked out the glass wall behind the bed, “He so rarely leaves you alone,” she mused, “I figured I’d make the best of this opportunity.”

I wondered what she would want to tell me that she didn’t want Edward hearing. Curiosity peaked, I sat up a little straighter and watched her profile as she stared unseeing into the darkness beyond the panes.

“I wanted…” she hesitated, “I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t do it.”

I felt my brow furrow above my eyes, “Why I shouldn’t do what?”

Amber eyes fell on me, serious and sad and for the first time, I realized how old Rosalie was. Underneath her perfect immortal skin, Rosalie had lived nearly a hundred years, and in her eyes, those years shone through. “Why you shouldn’t become a vampire, Isabella.”

“…Oh.”

Rosalie told me the story of a beautiful girl, a happy and shallow girl who lived in nineteen twenty-six and who dreamed of love and children.

“My family was thoroughly middle class,” she said, “father was…was…” she sighed, held up two delicate fingers on each hand and made air-quotes, “a ‘banker’.” She gave me a meaningful look and went through my mental history notes about what I knew of the 1920’s

“Dude!” I exclaimed, “Your dad was a bootlegger?” Bankers made good in the decade before the Great Depression, but there were other, less-legal ways to make one’s fortune and if a person had the skills and cunning to see that path through, it was an exciting and prosperous lifestyle.

She smiled, “You’re quicker than Emmett. I had to drop half a hundred hints before he realized that my father wasn’t a banker.”

“Why’d you drop hints?” I asked, “I don’t know if you’ve seen the local liquor stores lately, but prohibition isn’t a thing anymore.”

She shrugged, “two lifetimes of habit, I suppose. My parent wanted to be respectable, it still feels like a betrayal to admit that papa made his money outside the law.”

I nodded. I understood better than I figured I had any right to. After all, with as many credit card companies as my dad had scammed….

No, what?

Rosalie spun a tale of fairytale romance gone horribly, horribly wrong. She’d been engaged to the most eligible bachelor in her town and her dreams were all about to come gloriously true in the Golden Age of American History. This is, until she was betrayed, brutalized and left to die by the man she thought to take as husband the night before their wedding. She told me about how she’d been beaten, raped, left to die in a pool of her own blood and filth before Carlisle had taken her from the clutches of death and into a new life.

She told me her story of revenge. Of how she killed her worthless fiancé and his accomplices without spilling a drop of their blood. I think she expected to shock me.

I felt nothing but dark, ferocious approval of every move she’d made.

“My dreams were stolen from me,” she said, “but not only by Royce.” She said her dead fiancé’s name like something foul. “Carlisle took those dreams, too. All I’d ever wanted was to be loved, and with Emmett, I am. But we’ll never grow up, never have babies and watch them grow, and grow old together and hold our grandchildren in our laps and know that we’d made it- when our youth was left behind, we’d still have had love and laughter and memories and a beautiful, beautiful family to hold our hands at the end and put flowers on our graves.” Her eyes glittered strangely in the light. There was pain there, a deep hole that would never be filled for the age and the end and the children she would never have.

“I’d trade places with you in an instant, Bella,” she insisted, “You’re eighteen. You have every possible option. You think this is what you want, but you’re just a kid. Once you do this, there is no going back. And you might think you don’t want those things now, but in the years and decades to come, you will. You’ll want the opportunities that you’re throwing away now.”

“Maybe.” I said, not ready to admit out loud that my resolve in the future I’d thought I’d chosen with Edward had been shaken right to its foundation these past weeks.

“Just… think about it a little?” She urged, “Once it’s done, it can’t be undone.”

I nodded, “I will.”

She ghosted to the door and paused for a moment, her smile gone sharp at the edges, “And Bella? Times were very different when Edward was a human. They were very different when I was a human.” She shot a slightly venomous look at Edward’s bed, “The social customs of his youth were built upon the measure of control men had over the women they considered theirs. Do remind my brother that times have changed, will you?”

With that, she slipped out of the room, closing the door behind her.

It took me a long time to get to sleep after that.

 

In my dream, for the first time, I wasn’t with Jake. I was with my dad.

We’d been on this case for two days. A company were renovating a building in New York City and they’d stumbled on the remains of a Speak Easy from the time of prohibition. Moth eaten velvet curtains and cobwebbed tables that still had dust-caked glasses and long-burned cigarettes on the tatters of tablecloths. Furs and coats and ornate headbands and fabric purses with brass clasps were strewn about like everyone had just gotten up and walked away in the middle of one hell of a party.

And then the construction crew started dying.

Three victims, all members of the renovation team who had gone in alone at one point or another, had gone home and smothered their wives before shooting themselves.

It had angry spirit written all over it.

Ferris Shaw had been a bootlegger in the late twenties, a man who, in an attempt to turn over a respectable leaf (and double his profit), had started investing in the stocks about ten seconds before the market crashed.

He had gone to his favorite Speak Easy, one that everyone had pretty much abandoned the minute they’d gotten word that the country had just ended, gotten himself nice and smashed, gone home and smothered his lovely young wife before shooting himself.

Dad and I were at the local cemetery where Ferris Shaw had been buried and it was a routine Salt ‘N’ Burn on a chilly November night where my dad dug up a body and I waited with a shotgun full of rock-salt in the chance that Ferris Shaw would pay us a visit as we were toasting his corpse.

Dad passed the time between quizzing me on different kinds of monsters we’d come across and how to kill them and telling me stories of hunts he’d been on before I was old enough to go with him.

When he hit wood, he pried open the top of the coffin and I poured a bag of salt over the corpse. Next was the gasoline.

“You wanna…” Dad proffered the pack of matches and I took them with some surprise. I was twelve and dad usually made me stay back when he lit up the corpse. It didn’t strike me as odd until I was older that he had no problem with me holding a loaded gun but he was wary of flames.

I took the matches, singed my finger trying to light it and then dropped the flickering flame into the moldering coffin. The flames licked up over the lip of the hole, briefly, before they settled in to burn the dried bones of Ferris Shaw.

May he rest in peace, yadda yadda.

Dad put an arm around my shoulders and we watched the flames for several minutes before packing up going back to the car. I wanted to call Jake and gloat that dad had let me burn a body and Billy still had him manning the flashlight.

It felt like a childhood on nights like that. It didn’t feel like dad’s revenge quest, it didn’t feel like a nightmare, or homelessness or a freakshow that would drive most of the people in this world insane.

I was a twelve year old girl whose life made very little sense. But sometimes, I got to burn a corpse and hug my dad.

That felt like enough.

 

The next morning, Alice drove me to school. We didn’t talk. I didn’t feel like talking. I felt like I was four cups of coffee short of remembering how words were formed. I convinced Alice, via a series of grunts and points, to detour to the coffee house and ordered whatever was biggest, strongest, and most likely to cull the edge of malice that sleeping on that godforsaken couch had instilled in me.

It was a good thing vampires didn’t have to sleep because I was completely _human_ and that couch made me want to rip someone’s trachea out with my teeth. Shit.

“Tonight we’ll go to Olympia or something,” Alice promised as I sucked down a cup of coffee so strong it could have doubled for jet fuel in a pinch. Perfection.

“Or how about you just plow right past the sugar coating and lock me in the basement?” I suggested.

Alice frowned, “You’re not having any fun. He’s going to take the Porsche back. I’m doing a terrible job at this.”

I took pity on my friend, “It’s not you, Alice. I don’t think anyone could be expected to kidnap their brother’s girlfriend and make her enjoy it.”

We got to school and I bade her goodbye as I shuffled off to English class. It was two weeks before the end of the school year and that meant that ‘class’ consisted of reviewing for finals. The teachers were even more worn out and ready for summer than the students, and so turned a blind eye to yearbooks and notes which got passed across the classroom.

            Mike tried to start up a conversation with me during class, tried to make some kind of plans with me for the weekend in Edward’s absence. He was a nice guy, really, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he was some kind of glutton for rejection.

            We were walking across the parking lot toward our next classes and I was saved having to come up with some kind of explanation or excuse by the sudden roar of an engine behind us. I, and everyone else in the lot, turned toward the source of the noise and found Jacob and his black monster of a motorcycle tearing up the space between it and me.

            “Did somebody order a badass?” He asked, as he slid the machine up next to me with a grin that could have warmed Pluto with its power. He handed me a spare helmet, a helmet in a very dark purple that reminded me of…. Something… and I didn’t spare a second of thought before climbing on the back of his bike.

            “If anyone asks…” I started at Mike, preparing an excuse. Then, I thought of that damned gilded bed in Edward’s room and I realized I didn’t give a crap what anyone thought. “If anyone asks,” I said and I felt my grin go feral, “screw ‘em.”

            Jake twisted the clutch and we shot off across the tar. I caught a glimpse of Alice as we passed, her eyes sparkling black fury and her lip curled over her teeth and I couldn’t help yelling into the open sky the same thing as I had on my last escape.

            “Sorry, Alice!”


	10. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam demands a chick flick moment, Dean gets subsequent hives. Jake stages a jailbreak, Bella runs her mouth, and it's a small world after all...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M NOT DEAD!!!!
> 
> Okay, so I moved, got broken up with, am in the process of writing an original novel, have gone through three different jobs, and I just basically fell off the face of the earth for a while there. But for the six of you who read this, I'm sorry I left you hanging and your comments have given me life.

_Oh let the sun beat down upon my face_

_Stars caress my dreams_

_I am a traveler of both time and space_

_To be where I have been_

-Led Zeppelin

 

            “Thanks, Jo.” Dean hung up the phone without preamble. Jo was pretty, petit, the kind of girl he should have hit on so hard she hit back. If he hadn’t met her in the days following his dad’s death, if she wasn’t so like Issy in so many ways and so unlike her in so many others, well…

            Sam came through the door with a police folder as big as a phone book and a grim expression. He’d been giving Dean that same look since they’d torched the vampire and sooner or later, he was going to muscle his way past the brick wall of Dean’s scowl and demand a chick-flick moment.

            “I gotta get out of here, Sammy.” Ganking that vampire was the most action he’d seen in the week they’d been working this crap case and the rest of the time had seen Dean more or less confined to their motel room.

Even he knew that noon was too early to start shooting back whiskey, tempting though it may be, as he practically dragged his brother to the bar and grill a couple miles up the road. Sam, of course, brought along his laptop and several books of lore because he was a super-sized geek who might actually wither and die without something boring to distract him from all the fun he might otherwise be having, Dean was sure.

Dean shot a glance at the pool table in the corner, customarily surrounded by douchebags because that game attracted douchebags like a corpse attracts flies, and considered getting a few beers in him and then relieving the players of a few bills. Fake credit cards only went so far, and Dean used cash for most everything he could.

An arched brow and aborted frown from his brother told him that noon was also too early for hustling townies out of their money, and also that Dean probably shouldn’t go making vanilla enemies when they had no idea how long they were going to be stuck in Port Angeles, and also that Dean shouldn’t be drinking this early in the day. Dean was as impressed by the nuance of Sam’s bitch face as he was annoyed by it.

The eldest Winchester redirected his brother’s attention to the case before the waitress came over and the boy’s ordered their food. After a lifetime on the road, there was no point looking at a menu. Every Applebee’s and 99 and Winghouse was exactly like every other. A plate of chicken tenders and fried pickles was just like every other. Dean was practically a connoisseur of French fries.

Sam pretended to fiddle with his computer for a moment, eyes set deep under sympathetic brows darting back and forth from it to his taciturn older brother with that watery look of utter empathy that Dean knew meant the time had come when Sammy was going to insist on a gooey, saccharine, unmanly, emotional _scene_ that was already making Dean break out into hives.

“Listen, Dean…” Sam was so earnest that Dean wanted to punch him almost as much as he wanted to roll him up in a blanket and stuff him full of Mac ’N’ Cheese while watching cartoons like when they were kids. Those big, sincere puppy eyes pulled on Dean’s hyper masculine heart strings like nothing on this earth could, and the little shit knew it, too.

Sam cleared his throat and then rushed out the words as if a breathless string of sounds would batter down the reinforced barricades around Dean’s emotions; “Look, don’t say your fine because we both know that’s not true. We just lost dad and I know how you felt about the man, but I also know how you felt about Issy. You loved her, Dean, and you were never the same after she died. I get it, I do. But I am not going to just sit back and watch you rip yourself apart like you did after dad died, because dad wasn’t your fault and neither were Issy and Jake. I’m not saying you have to talk to me, man. I’m just saying… I’m here. You’re not doing any of this alone.”

It was moments, little moments like that, where Dean was truly grateful for Sam. He’d never say it, couldn’t even show it, felt his muscles contract painfully at the thought of an outward display of affection or gratitude, but he felt it. Moments like that, words from the most important person in his life that said Dean wasn’t alone… they couldn’t completely drown out the litany of _worthless, hopeless, failure, nothing, blunt-little-instrument_ that played on a twenty-four-hour loop in the back of his mind, but they helped to bring the roar of self-hatred down to a whisper.

Issy had been like that, Dean couldn’t help but remember; when she’d looked at him, she saw something worth keeping. Dean couldn’t begin to imagine what but to her, he was something worthy of love. Maybe that made her more screwed up than he was, but he hadn’t cared. He’d skirted the line with her, grown up with her and been careful with her because on those rare, fleeting moments when he’d dared believe that he might ever be allowed to keep something for himself in this world, she’d been what he’d wanted.

Which just went to show how stupid he’d been. How selfish and blind and pathetic to think that _he_ could ever have that. That _he_ could ever have something as small as the warmth of another person’s touch in the dark and as huge as the knowledge that her touch was the one he’d always have.

 _We’re not built for the apple-pie life, Winchester,_ she’d said to him more than once. She’d been right. As much as Dean hated the job, as sick as Dean was of the job, the job – the family business – was Dean’s whole world. He _wished_ he could do something else. There had been a promise in those words, buried deep down in some secret place that neither were ever quite ready to shine a light in. A whisper of a promise that said that they could be unfit for the apple-pie life together.

Dean ruthlessly stifled those memories and the feeling associated with them. He knew Sam was watching him with quiet intensity and tried not to flinch at what his face must have given away. He didn’t dare meet his brother’s eyes for fear of the pity that would be reflected back at him.

Dean cleared his throat gruffly and rasped, “Jo called. She said Ash had been looking into these killings and he thinks he might have found a pattern. You should call him back, Sam. Nerds talk best with other nerds.”

And just like that, the walls were firmly back in place. Dean couldn’t be weak, he couldn’t be compromised. If he allowed cracks to form in the armor around his heart, he’d fall apart and self-destruct. He couldn’t do that to Sam.

            So, maybe Dean wasn’t meant to be loved. Maybe he was just a hunter. But Dean was a damn good hunter. So he was going to save lives worth more than his own, he was going to look after Sammy, he was going to kill some evil sons of bitches, and he was gonna raise a little hell.

            She’d have liked that.

***

            Jake tore up the road between Forks High School and the Quileute reservation line. He didn’t drop the bike to below seventy until he’d crossed over into the wolves’ territory.

            “I’m amazing,” he boasted as we dismounted the machine in his driveway, “I really am.”

            “Yeah, dude,” I humored him, “you’re the bomb.” Not that I wasn’t feeling extremely grateful for daring rescue, but it was better not to lend any inflation to that head of his.

            “It looks like rain,” I pointed out when my friend made no move to push his beloved bike into the safety of the garage.

            Jake squinted up at the overcast sky, a blank white slate that stretched over the treetops as far as we could see, and shrugged, “not an issue,” he insisted with a quirk of his lips that promised mischief, “we’re not hanging around. We’re here to get your bike and a riding jacket to hide that lumberjack look you’re rocking.”

            I looked down at the gray and black flannel shirt I wore over my black tee shirt and didn’t know whether to be indignant or not. I was not about to take fashion advice from a guy who favored skin-tight sleeveless tanks when he bothered to wear shirts at all.

            “You need to ride a motorcycle regularly to keep it in tune,” he continued obliviously, “and I could give your bike a tune up, but what’s the point in having it if you never ride it? You need a break from the fang gang and I need a night off from the furious furries, so I was thinking we could take a ride down to Port Angeles today.”

            I had to bite my tongue to keep the ecstatic assent from passing my lips before I could give it any serious thought. Port Angeles was sixty miles away, a tourist hive of activity in the early summer months and a much-needed reprieve from everything that was going on around the pair of us. It was far enough away to shelter him from the unending psychic chatter of his pack and crowded enough that Edward wouldn’t dare make a scene if he somehow managed to follow us.

            But that was assuming we made it the sixty miles to civilization before we were waylaid by the vampire coven. Jake’s bike wasn’t exactly inconspicuous in volume and I was half-certain Edward was already back and prowling the treaty border as we spoke. If he got Jake on neutral territory, I didn’t want to think what would happen to one or both of them.

            But the siren song of something close to _freedom_ called to every nerve in my body.

            _The open road, the wind through my hair and the thrill of the hunt. Every cell on fire with the heady, intoxicating purity of it. My kid brother by my side as we drove so far and so fast we might have outrun the devil on the highway to Hell._

            It was an illusion, of course. We’d have to come back, our lives were here. But for a few precious hours, we could be back on the blacktop where we…

( _belonged_ )

            Regardless, there were good reasons why Jake and I hadn’t gone off the reservation (pun more or less intended) together. My dad didn’t know that Jake hadn’t scrapped my bike like he’d told him to after the cliff diving/Italy fiasco, and if he found out that I still had it, let alone that I’d skipped school to ride it down to Port Angeles, he’d be beside himself. And Edward was already going to be furious, did I really want to muddy those waters any further?

            _He locked you up. He wrapped you in this Stepford nightmare and enforced his will with a smile. He took away your_ family _._ _He took away your choices. He promised to protect you, promised to be there. And then he broke his promises. He was_ all you had _, Issy._

            And woah, was there such a well of bitterness and pain in that deep, deep internal monologue that I barely knew where it came from. There was anger there that didn’t begin to touch even my worst feelings for Edward over the past forty-eight hours. I looked down to find my hands balled into shaking fists and my best friend watching me with quiet concern.

            “You got lost there for a minute,” he observed.

            “It’s been happening a lot lately,” I confessed in turn. I expected Jake to question it, but he only shook his head as if he understood perfectly. And, though I couldn’t put words to why, I believed that he did.

            Regardless of the deep, dark seeds of anger I was learning were taking root inside me, there was a fundamental truth there; I was completely, utterly, inarguably fucking _done_ with being told what to do. I wanted to go, and so I was going. Edward threw away his right to a vote when he used Alice to force my hand.

            I nodded, “Okay. Let’s go.”

            Jake’s face split into a megawatt smile that I couldn’t help but return. I felt some of the tension drain from me and I took a breath.

            “Thank Christ, because I might actually have burned down a building if I had to spend one more day here without a break.” There was a very real edge to his voice that said _things_ would be _discussed_ once we were out of preverbal earshot of the Pack.

            Which, of course, piqued my curiosity. “New scandal?”

            Jake growled, a genuine Wolf growl that reverberated in his chest and all the way up his throat like a savage thing, “You could say that.”

            We stood in tense silence for a moment before he exploded, “Quil imprinted! That’s three friggin wolves in the Pack who have imprinted, and it’s starting to feel way more common than the stories lead any of us to believe. It sucks!”

            “Is she a sea monster or something?” I asked, half-sarcastic. I knew why he was so upset, but if Quil was happy, what was the issue?

            Jake barked a mirthless laugh, “If only.” He scowled to a spot in the distance, “She’s two years old.”

            “Holy shit.” I breathed, “that’s… Jake, that’s _unconscionable_.”

            “It’s still a smaller age gap than you and Edward, _Bella_.” Jake spat with every ounce of the embittered sixteen year old who I’d thought he’d stopped being. And also, ouch. That was a low blow.

            He sighed, “I’m sorry. That was a dick thing to say. It’s just. This is starting to feel like some kind of inescapable curse. I can’t help being what I am, but I don’t want any of it if it means that there are huge decisions about my life that I’m never going to have a say in. It’s… it’s just a really claustrophobic feeling like I should stare at my shoes for the rest of my life or else risk magic bullshit werewolf binding myself to someone I don’t even know.”

            “So… Is Quil, like, in love with this kid?”

            “No.” Jake denied vehemently. “Not yet. His feelings for Claire are completely platonic… sort of. It’s complicated. He understands that he will be in love with her, when she’s older. But he… I guess he’ll be whatever she needs him to be until then.”

            I blinked.

            “It’s…”

            I blinked some more.

            Jake sighed, “It’s sick, creepy, unnatural, and it ruined that little girl’s life.”

            “Yyyyep.”

            “That’s awful judgmental, Jacob.”  We both looked up and there was the Pack; tall, shirtless, and each looking like they could bench-press a semi. Quil’s lip was curled in indignant rage.

            “It’s true.” I said, shrugging.

            “You don’t know anything about it, Vampire-lover.” Sam snarled.

            “Oh, don’t I?” I snarled back, “Because it sounds to me like little Claire got a say in none of this. Also, if Quil spends her entire formative years being the bestest big brother a girl could ever have, what makes any of you think she’s ever going to see him as anything else? Or are you just grooming this kid like an Appalachian child bride? I enjoy how you’re all blithely accepting that you get to plan this two-year-old girl’s entire future because Quil here is having a nasty trip down Hormone Lane. And what are you going to do, Quil? Stop her from having boyfriends in high school? Stop her from experimenting in college? Teach her from a very young age that she’s for you, and you alone?”

            Jake grabbed me by the upper arm and hauled me back about a fraction of a second before the newest Wolf shifted and lunged. I landed on my ass in the dirt as Jake caught his packmate, mid-lunge, right by the throat. He didn’t change form, didn’t shift into his own formidable Wolf form, merely willed long claws out of his human hands and held the bear-sized wolf in the air with one arm.

I’d never seen a Wolf control their shift with such finite skill. Wolves were all or nothing in their shift, and a look at the wide-eyed surprise on the Pack’s Alpha said that it was like nothing Sam had ever seen either.

            “Don’t. _Ever_. Try that. Again.” Jake said it with absolute authority. With crystal-clear promise of extreme violence on any and all of them who dared make a move.

            And suddenly it was all so clear; Jake wasn’t a Werewolf of the Pack. Jake was a Wolf; he wasn’t a protector the way the rest of the pack was. Jake was a predator; he was a hunter.

            And he set the standard for badass.

            “Stop, Jacob.” Sam’s voice was the iron-clad law of his pack; he was Alpha and – from what Jake had told me – his orders were followed. Whether they wanted to be or not.

            Jake promptly dropped Quil to the ground, where the young Wolf retained his human form and glared between Jake and me as if he could kill us with a look alone.

            Jake’s cold black eyes sought out Sam’s, “We’re leaving. If you need me, don’t bother calling. I’ll be back when I am.”

            He hauled me up and practically dragged me to his garage. He didn’t let go until the door was closed behind us where he promptly stomped over to his old motorcycle, picked it up with one hand and hurled it into his Rabbit. There was the crunch of metal and shatter of glass and I couldn’t help the flinch that shivered through me.

            “How is your mouth _always_ getting us into trouble?” He asked, his back to me.

            “I…” I honestly didn’t know what to say. I’d run off at the mouth with absolutely no regard to my own safety. Reckless and impulsive and everything else I’d never been until Edward came back into my life. Jake muttered something vitriolic about New Mexico and South Carolina.

            “What are you talking about?”

            “I don’t know!” Jake roared, “I barely know who I am, anymore. I don’t know what the hell just happened, or how the hell I did that. I do know that everyone has started looking at me different, that I have dreams almost every single night about being in places I’ve never been and living a whole life I’ve never lived, and loving people I’ve never met. I dream of hot Midwestern highways and it feels –”

            “ –it feel more like home than your own bed.” I finished for him.

            “I can do things that even Wolves shouldn’t be able to do. I feel like a freak by even freak standards, I know that you are the single most important person in my life, and yet I’d rather bang Embry than so much as kiss you, because he feels less like family. I’m losing my goddamned mind, and I need to be the fuck out of this town before I do some real damage.”

             I heaved a breath, exhaled, and decided that I wasn’t going to stop him. I wasn’t going to stay put for fear of an altercation between Jake and Edward. I was pretty sure my brother would paddle my boyfriend’s ass like an indolent child at this point, and while I knew that I could intercede before either of them dared do real damage, if Edward wanted to make an issue, I was happy to step back and let him learn a little humility.

            I nodded and pulled the sheet from over my own motorcycle.

            And stopped dead.

            It wasn’t my bike. My bike had been a Honda XL 250. The motorcycle before me, painted that familiar deep, red-tinged purple, was a Honda Royal Enfield Thunderbird 350. “Jake…” I turned to my brother who looked sheepish, as if I hadn’t just watched him pick up a motorcycle with one hand and launch it into his own car like a missile.

            “Well,” he said, “your bike was pitiful! I mean, I built the damn thing and even I thought it was a clunker!” He slid one loving finger over the rose madder colored shine of my new bike’s finish, “This has been my pet project the last few months. It started out as, I dunno, anger management. Now, it’s your early graduation gift. Enjoy!” He spread his hands benevolently.

            I stepped into the space between them and wrapped my arms around his broad torso, “thanks, kid. She’s magnificent.”

            He squeezed me gently in the confines of his oversized arms before pushing me back with a mega-watt smile like the last fifteen minutes had never happened, “She ain’t gonna ride herself, Bells!” He tossed me his old leather jacket, the one he’d worn before he’d discovered his Wolf powers and beefed out like an advertisement for better living through steroid abuse.

            It was soft and black and smelled like _that cologne he’d picked up in Pittsburg when he was fourteen and figuring out that he liked boys as much as girls and truly wasn’t picky, especially after that one incident with the jock in his last high school…_

            I shook my head and it was like a black cloth wrapped around my thoughts and pulled them away as if they’d never been. Except that they _had_ been. I couldn’t make out the shape of the thoughts, but I knew that those thoughts had existed. It was infuriating.

            We took our bokes out to the road, the rain was picking up but it was yet to be a prohibitively heavy pour and Jake assured me we could outrun it.  
            “Like flying,” he grinned and flicked the switch on his monster machine. The bitch seat doubled as a speaker and suddenly the familiar opening rifts of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing poured out.

            “Are you trying to get his attention?” I asked, rolling my eyes as I turned the key in my bike’s ignition. She roared to life like a dream.

            My brother batted his eyes at me, “You know me, Issy. I never could resist a pretty face.” His grin turned feral, “especially if I was ripping it off with my teeth.”


	11. Interlude

Six months! Six! Months!   
I am the worst! Things have been crazy, and your comments and kudos have been the brightest light down a dark tunnel.   
New update by Friday or I give you my address and you can come spear me with pitchforks. 

I love you all, and this story WILL continue. 

Ink


	12. Clues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean sees ghosts, Bella feels guilt, Jake kicks ass and there are four cardinal rules to hustling pool.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say Saturday?  
> Alright, well. A deal's a deal. My address is 123 Real Street, City, state 11111. I await your pitchforks.

 

 _Woke up to the sound of pouring rain_  
The wind would whisper and I'd think of you  
And all the tears you cried, that called my name  
And when you needed me I came through

-Skid Row –

 

            _Jesus_ , Dean thought with mounting disgust as Sam filled him in on the pattern that Ash had found in the victims. Jesus, they were going after kids. Anyone older than thirty five who had been attacked had wound up dead. The ones who were missing – and likely turned, just like the babypire they’d blown up had been – were kids, barely into or nearly out of their teens. The youngest had been a thirteen year old boy and the oldest had been a nineteen year old girl.

            Dean sharpened his machete to a lethal point, his guts churning the entire time with rage and a not insignificant amount of excitement at the thought of putting distance between the head and the body the thing that had turned _kids_.

            “So, what do we do?” Sam asked, his expression turned earnest and Dean took a moment to let his brother have that shred of optimism before he was forced to quash it.

            Sam wanted to save those kids, he wanted to put them in some kind of vampire outreach program and save what might be left of their lives. But Dean knew, their lives were over. Those kids were dead and

            _What’s dead should stay dead_

Dean looked up at his shaggy haired brother, a boy who had somehow turned into a good man right in front of his eyes but who was still so much a kid himself sometimes.

            “We kill them,” he said.

            “Dean –”

            “Hey, I don’t like it any more than you do, but those aren’t kids anymore, Sammy. They’re monsters. And we can’t let them hurt anybody else.” He sheathed his blade and stood, taking one last pull from the bottle he’d been nursing for twenty minutes and collecting his jacket.

            “I’m going to the library to see what I can pull up from the Forks and Seattle newspapers, see if anything like this happened in Forks before last year.”

            Sam looked like he wanted to argue, his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed but he only said, “Could you give me a ride to the bus station? I’m going to head back to Seattle and talk to the victim’s families.”

            Dean thought of arguing, his instinct to protect his younger brother immediately chafing at the idea of letting him go to the feeding ground of a massive vampire nest without backup, even for a day.

            But Sam could look after himself, and he looked like he wasn’t about to take no for an answer. He was sporting the same look in his eyes as the time a year before when he’d took off to California to find dad.

            In all fairness, it had been Dean who’d ended up tied to a tree as a sacrifice to a pagan Pie god, or something.

            Dude had been fugly, though.

            After a beat, Dean nodded. “call me when you find something.” It meant, _check in with me or I will go looking for your ass._

            Sam nodded, understanding what couldn’t be spoken. “Yeah, let me know what you dig up at the library.” It meant, _watch your back, too. You’re not the only one who worries._

            Dean handed his brother a gun, “Bitch.”

            “Jerk.”

           

            Dean climbed behind the wheel of the Impala and they pulled away from the All View Motel and onto the main street. He turned the car toward the seacoast and the Greyhound bus terminal and came up behind two motorcycles in traffic.

            One was huge and black with an equally huge rider; a tall and muscular man who Dean could only see the back of in a sleeveless black shirt that showed off a tribal tattoo that decorated the dark skin of his massive bicep.

            He was painfully familiar to Dean in a way the hunter just couldn’t quite put his finger on. Though Dean could only see the back of the man’s head, though he had nothing in common with his lost friend but a noticeable height and Native blood – though his skin was much lighter and sported less tattoos, and overlaid muscles so thick that Dean suspected chemical enhancement - the older Winchester could not help but think of Jake.

            The second rider was a woman in a soft, worn leather jacket and had a spill of hair the color of dark chocolate that was tied in a loose braid down her back. Her helmet and bike were both a blend of purple and red that was not too light

            _And not too dark, she’d said and her hazel eyes were alight with a rare kind of uninhibited joy as Dean striped the final coating of sealant over her car’s new paint job._

            Dean knew that color, had spent two hours in a custom shop adding reds to purples in an attempt to find that elusive shade that Issy called

            _Rose Madder. Like the book._

 

            Dean’s breathing sped up, his hands tightening on the Impala’s steering wheel. The engine growled low and lovely as they idled in traffic behind…

            Ghosts.

            He was surrounded by ghosts.

            Ghosts that he couldn’t fight because the ghosts were in his head. They were his guilt, his shame, his failures.

            The people he couldn’t save. The brother he can’t protect.

            The girl he couldn’t even admit how much he’d…

-x-

            He’d been sixteen and he’d _fought_ for this.

            Issy was in Sioux Falls, laid up at Bobby’s for three months with a broken leg after a Wendigo hunt had gone sideways in a serious way. He’d made the plan almost a year before, he’d saved and hustled pool until he’d had enough money to put his plan in motion. He’d bought the materials and he’d struck a deal with John, who had been against the idea from the beginning but was willing to honor an agreement he never believed his oldest son would be able to see through to the end.

            But he’d gotten that piece of paper and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

            It had been five-fifteen in the morning and he’d picked Bobby’s lock with significantly less finesse than he would have employed had he not generally believed the older hunter wouldn’t actually shoot him.

            Probably.

            Almost certainly.

            He’d snuck into her room, her prostrate form just a little too relaxed and her breathing just a little too even to truly be asleep.

She’d heard him coming through the door.

Her hand was shoved under the pillow and Dean knew there was a knife in her grip as surely as he knew there was a demon trap underneath the carpet upon which he stood.

            Dean _could_ have announced his presence but, he decided with the kind of impish grin she always accused of being his ‘we’re going to jail’ face, there was just no fun in that. Instead, he crept up to her bed, made an exaggeratedly sloppy grab for her shoulder and caught her wrist a second before her blade would have sliced through his throat.

            Their faces were close, her long brown hair disheveled from sleep and her hazel eyes bright and alert for perceived threat. It took her a split second to understand whose neck she was holding a knife to and she backed off with a snarl.

            “Winchester, are you trying to get yourself stabbed?”

            “Morning, sunshine.” He flashed a smile that made short work of most girls’ pants but only seemed to make Isabella thunderous.

            “Dean,” she said in deadly-calm a way that promised extreme violence, “It’s barely dawn. Why. The hell. Am I awake?”

            Dean pulled the knife from his throat and said, “I heard you got your ass kicked on a hunt.” He slapped a gentle hand down on the smooth skin just above the white plaster cast that covered her leg from toes to calf, “And I have something to show you.”

            He’d lead her to the brewing coffee and the baseball-capped surrogate uncle who shot Dean a slightly meaningful look as he passed Issy a steaming mug. Where John had vehemently discouraged The Plan, Bobby had been the opposite. He’d been an accomplice to the teenage boy’s idea and when

            When she looked less murderous about the hour, Dean helped her down the porch and to the scrap yard out behind the old Victorian house.

            “You gonna tell me what’s going on or do I have to guess?” She leaned on her crutches as she drank down her coffee, only slightly chill in the late-May morning.

            School was almost out for the summer and Issy was feeling particularly sour about being forced to miss out on the Job for a whole summer as her leg healed.

            Dean could not have planned it better.

            He pulled a white envelope from the pocket of John’s leather jacket and handed it to her, taking her cup in turn.

            She looked from it to him and back, “What is this?”

            “Open it,” he replied, trying to tamp down his excitement.

            She tore off the corner and spilled the contents into her waiting hand.

            “A purple paint sample, a receipt for sixteen hundred dollars, and a report card.” She listed, looking through the contents in her palm. She gave her friend a blank look, “You… shouldn’t have?”

            Dean took the receipt from her palm. It was from Singer Salvage for sixteen hundred dollars’ worth of parts. He wasn’t charging Dean for storage or time, which just put another check next to the millon others already in the Bobby-Is-Awesome column.

            The report card was Dean’s final report for the year, a culmination of the twelve school’s he’d bounced between for the nine months between the beginning and end of the academic year.

            Every single column was marked with an A.

            The third piece, the paint sample, was Issy’s favorite color, or as close as he could find. It was merely a rough idea.

            He steered her to a tarp-covered form, upon which was taped a bill of sale and a picture.

            “It’s your sixteenth birthday coming up.” He said, “And I… made a deal.”

            “What kind of deal?” She eyed him warily and it was the truest sign of the Job that he knew she was calculating the very small percentage of likelihood that he was referring to a Deamon Deal.

            “With my dad,” Dean said, “For the summer. To stay here, instead of hunt.”

            The question in her eyes was clear; Why?

            Dean pulled the tarp from the object beneath it and revealed a car’s bare frame, upon which was taped a photograph of a black automobile. A 1973 Chevy Nova.

            “Dean.” She breathed as realization dawned, “Dude, are you building me a car?”

            “No,” he said, “ _we’re_ building you a car. All summer, finished in time for your birthday in September. By the time I’m done with you, you’ll know how to take a car apart and put it back together like a pro.”

            “Holy shit, Dean.” Her voice was soft and amazed. She looked at him with that gut-twisting warmth, that look that said she saw something in him worth keeping. That look that said she felt...

            They stood too close in the crisp spring morning air, stared too long into each other’s faces without speaking. They knew, as they always knew, that they were two passing ships only loosely moored to those fleeting moments.

            But sometimes, those moments were enough.

-x-

            “Dean!” Sam shouted to the sound of horns honking behind them. The girl in the rose madder helmet looked back and Dean held his breath, half sure he was going to meet familiar hazel eyes.

            He was disappointed when her face was obscured by a shield but even though there was no way to be sure, Dean felt as if she were staring right at him. And then her companion shouted something and Dean got the barest glimpse of his profile.

            It had to be his imagination, his ghosts, because for just a second, he looked like Jake.

            The smaller bike’s engine revved and they were gone.

            Sam was looking at Dean, his own face pale. “I saw it too.”

            “Her color,” Dean choked, “that guy looked like.”

            Sam held up a hand and it only shook a little, “Dean I’ve seen their faces on everyone since we started this case. That was weird, yeah. But Dean, Jake and Issy are dead.”

            It was true, Dean knew it. The sadness is Sam’s voice said he wished as badly as Dean did that the two kids on their bikes who struck some breathtakingly familiar chords with the brothers could possibly have been them.

            But no.

            That guy had been too big, and far too young. Jake had been tall and lithe and covered in tattoos. His skin had been much darker, and no force on this earth or any other could have persuaded him to cut his long black hair into the only slightly shaggy mop of that kid’s head.

            And the girl.

            No.

            He hadn’t even seen her face. There was nothing but a shade of purple that was painfully close to Isabella’s favorite color. The color he’d painted her Nova that summer when he was sixteen and he’d built a car with his best friend because he was too much of a coward to tell the one girl who actually mattered how much he cared.

            He drove Sam to the Grey Hound in silence, not trusting himself to speak. He watched his brother purchase a ticket with a fake credit card and pull his duffel bag from the Impala’s back seat.

            “You’ll be okay?” Sam asked, earnest and so brimming with concern that Dean felt that familiar, almost painfully strong stab of affection for the kid.

            He flashed a grin, but not the grin he’d flashed Issy all those years ago. His grin was fake but so practiced that he hoped his younger brother would accept it at face value.

            He didn’t. He also didn’t comment.

            “Call when you find something,” Sam urged and it was Dean’s turn to nod vaguely.

            “Yeah, you too.”

             

***

            I couldn’t believe it. We’d made it to Port Angeles and Edward hadn’t showed. Hadn’t tried to stop us. I’d been tense as a coil ready to spring from the moment we passed over the reservation line until we passed out of Forks.

            I’d been sure I was going to see Edward’s Volvo speeding up behind us in the otherwise deserted road but the ride – other than being exhilarating on its own – had been uneventful.

            Until we’d been sitting in traffic and I’d heard that engine purring up behind me, a deep growling beast that sang to me like a familiar lullaby. It rumbled deep in my chest, wrapping fingers around my heart from across the boundaries of imagination and reality.

            _Treat your baby good and she’ll always be good to you._

            I imagined green eyes and grease-smeared fingers that trailed feather-light and roughly callused over the jut of my collar bone.

            I saw freckles and full lips and I knew what I was going to see even before I peeked behind me. I saw black and chrome wink prettily at me and two figures in the driver and passenger seats though the sun shone directly down on the windshield and made it impossible to see their faces.

            It was insane, _impossible_ , but I felt sure that if the driver were to unfold himself from his car, he’d have dark blond hair and bottle green eyes and he’d be the most beautiful man I’d ever seen in my life.

            He’d have the face of someone I loved.

            “Bells!” I hadn’t noticed the honking until Jake hollered for me, “Left turn!” There was something agitated in his voice. Something that desperation had made harsh. I turned away from the car

  _1967 Chevy Impala. He called her Baby._

And followed my brother down a winding back alley, too narrow for the wide car to follow.

            Jake led me to a bar and grill four streets over and cut the engine with slightly more force than normal. He looked from me to the key in his hands and back again before finally clearing his throat and saying, “So, this is gonna sound, like, extremely crazy, but did that car seem familiar to you?”    

            I felt my brows crease my forehead as I met his dark eyes, “what car?”

            Jake gave me a long look. “The big black impala from forty-five seconds ago?” He said, brows set deep over his dark eyes. There had been a car. There had been… something

_Lips, eyes, grease-stained ands and the scent of gun oil and leather…_

But nothing that jumped out.

            Had there?

_Lips, eyes, “treat my baby good…”_

            I shrugged, “not really.” I cast a wary eye to the street for any sign of Edward’s Volvo. Jake watched me with an inscrutable expression for several long seconds, as if he was trying to find something in my face. I held his gaze and eventually he shrugged is a way that was slightly too casual and mumbled, “nothing. Forget it.”

            He steered me into the restaurant with a cheerful, “I’m starving!” that sounded somehow false. We took a booth near a pool table where a group of men who were only a few years older than us were playing.

            Badly.

            One of the group, a man who was several inches shorter than Jake but nearly as muscular and wearing a white shirt with TAP OUT scrawled in black spiking letters across the front was lining up his shot and I could tell even from my limited vantage point that the angle was wildly miscalculated. The balls clacked against one another and pinged aimlessly off the table’s walls. Jake and I exchanged a look. My brother snorted.

            TAP OUT shot him a glare but said nothing as he picked up a pint glass and took a swig. I gave the menu a cursory appraisal, gamely ignoring the rampant display of testosterone. It didn’t matter what was on the meal list, every 99 and TGIF and Winghouse was just like every other afterall.

            I was practically a connoisseur of French fries.

            What?

            The waitress came and took our orders. Jake chose the veggie wrap with fries and I ordered a burger. It never struck me as odd that Jake was a vegetarian. We talked about nothing in particular as we waited. It was nice to not have the Pack or the Cullens breathing down our necks. It felt normal.

            Natural.

            As we ate, the pool players continued their game, continued their mid-day drinking and became progressively worse at the game as they went.  Jake looked on with mounting interest and I felt the unexplainable urge to tell him not to hustle home turf.

            ‘ _Fundamental rule,’ said the man who was not my uncle but was as he adjusted his faded baseball cap and chalked the end of his pool cue until it sprinkled a fine blue powder onto his fingers, ‘you don’t hustle where you sleep. Never know when an angry local will try coming around looking for their money.’_

            I shook my head to clear it of the cobwebs of things that weren’t – couldn’t be – memories and watched Jake watch the players.

            “This is getting sad,” he sighed as three rounds passed without a single ball landing in a hole. He finished his wrap, wiped his hands and stood. I was half way through my burger and grunted in protest.

            “What the hell are you doing?” I demanded as I swallowed my bite of food. My brother flashed a grin and winked.

He turned to the game table and said something to the guy in the TAP OUT shirt. The guy jerked back and the look on his face made me think Jake was looking to start a bar fight and I made to stand. I wasn’t worried for the teen wolf’s safety, but Hulking out in the middle of a sports bar in Port Angeles wouldn’t do anyone any favors.

Jake said something else too low for me to hear and he pulled out his wallet. TAP OUT did the same and money was placed on the table.

“Issy,” Jake called over, taking a long stick and holding it out to me, “wanna play?”

 

_“First,” he said in that gruff South Dakota drawl, “always know the table before you shoot. Literally and figuratively. Don’t try to play a loaded table, that’s how you get had.”_

 

I stood and took the stick, chalked it until a fine blue powder dusted over my fingertips. It should not have felt so familiar, I couldn’t remember ever playing a game of pool in my life. But that stick felt familiar. Felt like a hundred nights learning the angles and tricks of the game.

 

_“Second,” he said, putting down the calk and adjusting his cap, “you make sure that stick is chalked before each shoot.” He lined bent at the waist and lined the point of the stick to the white ball that would serve as the breaking force for the neatly arranged triangle of brightly colored spheres in the center of the green felt table._

The balls were arranged and Jake pulled a quarter from his pocket. TAP OUT called heads and this was the moment where one of two things was going to happen; Jake would shoot first, or he’d shoot second. The important part was that we adjusted our strategy accordingly.

 

_“Third,” He lanced the cue to the ball and sent the whole table scattering, sinking three striped balls in one flick of his experienced wrist, “know your opponent. There’s every chance a drunken barfly’s been playing since before you kids were a twinkle in your parents’ eyes.”_

 

            The coin flipped end over end in the air and landed on the tabletop, face-down. Tails. Jake didn’t give anything away in his face and neither did I. But this was going to be a very short game.

            He bent at the waist, lined up his shot angled very, very slightly to the right, and struck the white ball with a perfect dry crack. The balls scattered across the table, an explosion of color as the solid-colored balls ricocheted off the table’s walls and sank neatly into their respective pockets until only two of our balls and the Eight were left in play.

            And then Jake did grin.

           

            _“And forth,” he worked his way around the table, neatly shooting balls into pockets with what looked to your young eyes like no effort at all, “practice, practice, practice.”_

            We left the restaurant soon after, Jake with a tidy sum of cash in his pocket. He’d left our waitress a large tip and she’d left him her phone number. Last summer, she probably would have assumed Jake and I were a couple. Now, the complicated feelings that we shared had settled into a bond that ran deeply between us but didn’t indicate romance to strangers around us.

            We were both relieved by it.

            “”I’m so god damned smooth, Is.” He crooned, “Just, walking _silk_.”

            I laughed, glad to see the shadow of anger and stress that always seemed to be in his dark eyes lifted for once. We were headed to your bikes when Jake suddenly veered left. On instinct, I turned with him, trying to remain relaxed to match Jake’s easy stride.

            Anyone who didn’t know him would not have seen the minute shift of muscles in his jaw and neck ( _had always been his biggest tell…_ ) or the leonine way his arms swung at his sides, a wolf loping through the forest.

            We were being followed.

            I caught the figure from the corner of my eye as we rounded the side of the building and into a wide alley that was blocked on the other end. We were half way down the alley when some instinct had me launching myself to the side as a figure appeared in the exact spot I had stood barely a second before.

            Jake spun, threw out and arm and caught the attacking vampire by the neck. He slammed the pale, medium sized figure into the wall and I saw his face. He was maybe sixteen with angular features and a slightly upturned, buttoned nose. He was absolutely adorable, barring the marble-white skin and deep-set red eyes and expression contorted with hate.

            Jake’s claws extended from his nails and he dug into the young vampire’s neck, as a growl tore itself from his throat. His brown eyes flashed amber and wolfish as the vampire hissed in his face.

            “That’ll be enough of fucking that,” Jake said, pulling him forward and slamming his head into the brick, pinning him there as before. Jake could tear this kid’s throat out with his bare hand, and punctuated that fact with a vicious squeeze that sent cracks shooting along that white stone skin from the points where Jake’s claws broke the skin.

            I got to my feet, nursing my wrist where I’d landed on it. “Why were you following us?” I demanded as the vampire thrashed impotently in Jake’s grip. “Who sent you?”

            The boy stopped struggling and let out a long, half-mad laugh. It was then that I recognized him. He looked different, obviously he would, but I’d seen his face before.

            His name was Alex Rossum. He was going to be fifteen in the first week of the coming June. He had been missing from West Seattle since the second week of May.

            He was one of the missing kids.

            “You know who sent me,” He spat, “My maker.”

            “Victoria,” Jake snarled, his teeth gone sharp in his mouth, canines razor peeks behind lips split back in a show of feral rage. “What does she want?”

            “It’s your fault,” Alex Rossum said, his red-tinged gaze never leaving my face as he choked around Jake’s claws, “She took me, and she ripped into my throat with her teeth. And she told me that you killed her family. She did this to me because of what you did to her.”

            “James,” I breathed, “because they killed James.”

            “This is your fault.” He repeated, “She’ll never stop. She’ll turn the world if it means making you pay. Making you suffer for what you took.”

            Victoria was behind the killing in Seattle. Jake and I had been right, and we had proof.

            _My fault. It was my fault. This boy, all of them… my fault._

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. This boy was dead – worse than dead. He was changed. And it was all because Victoria wanted to make me suffer. James had been her partner, her mate. He had tried to kill me, saw my life as sport and my death as inconsequential. He’d lived for the hunt, and he’d won. He’d lured me to him and my life was forfeit when I took those steps towards what I’d foolishly thought was saving my mother. It had been a trick, and he’d lain claim on my life.

            Until the Cullens interfered. Until Edward had fought for me, saved me.

            And saving me had doomed so many others.

            My fault.

            My fault.

            “I’m sorry,” I whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

            What was left of Alex Rossum let out another hysterical laugh, “She’ll never stop hunintg you. She’ll never stop until everyone you love is de –” there was a sound like cracking stone and a sound like tearing leather and Jake dug in his laws until the boy’s head came clean off his body.

            Cold, pink blood spattered across my chest and neck as the boy’s body fell, lifeless, and his head dropped to follow.

            He was dead.

            And it was my fault.

            “Don’t believe it for a second, Is.” Jake growled, “this is not your fault. Victoria’s a crazy ginger skank and her boyfriend had it coming. If he was alive, I’d kill him myself.”

            “She’s killing those kids to get to me,” I snapped, furious at him for trying to take this burden away, “That makes it my fault. I walked into James’ trap like an idiot. I led the Cullens to him, I set him up to die. And she wants payback. My choices led to this.” I closed my eyes and said the words that had been on infinite loop deep down in my soul since the killing in Seattle began; “This is my fault.”

            I ran a hand over my face. Fuck, I needed a beer. I needed a whole lot of beers. I needed anything that would dull the churning ache in my guts.

            I felt warm fabric wiping at the blood on my neck and opened my eyes to Jake, bare from the hips up and wiping his t-shirt across my skin. He was trying to wipe away the blood, but it made no difference, I still felt it on my skin.

            I thought I might always feel it on my skin.

            So, Victoria was behind the killings in Seattle and we finally had proof. Our proof wasn’t going to be doing a great deal of talking, but what mattered was that Jake and I had been right.

            “We.” I cleared me throat, “we can’t leave him here.”

            “Is, please don’t do this to yourself.” Jake pleaded and I felt a stab of warmth for my little brother was he squeezed his shirt in his hand until pink dripped between his knuckles.

            I took a deep breath and forced myself to be rational. “We can’t leave the headless body of a missing Seattle teen in an alley in Port Angeles.” I said, “You think people are panicking now? Imagine what would happen if people were to think it’s spreading to another city. We can’t leave this.”

            Jake considered for a second and then nodded. He asked me for my phone and I passed it over. I watched as he punched the numbers and held the phone to his ear. I didn’t listen to the conversation, guilt playing on an unending loop in my head.

            “Okay,” Jake said, “Leah and Quill are gonna come and take the body to the forests and burn it.”

            “His family have the right to know what happened to him,” I argue. My brother nodded, understanding and put two huge hands on my shoulders.

            “They do,” he agreed, “but we can’t risk his body being examined by a professional. It could mean exposure.” At the thunderous look that I knew was on my face, he added, “Issy, I hear you, I do. But it has to be this way. We’ll make Victoria pay, I swear it. But the world can’t see this body.”

            He shook out his shirt and put the boy’s torn-off head in it, “I’ll take this to the pack. We’ll see what we can do to track the nest. They’ll have to believe us now. Victoria is involved and we have a responsibility to stop her.”

            “And she just sent someone to try and kill me. The Cullens will smell the blood on me and they’ll have to admit the truth.” I breathed deeply, pulling myself together slightly, “We have to stop her.”

           

            It was a long and sober ride back to Forks. Jake had Alex’s head in a saddle bag and he kept adjusting his riding to keep as close to me as possible. Jake was scared for me, I realized, he thought I was defenseless.

            And worse, I was.

            How could I stop a vampire? How could I hope to defend myself?

            The girl in my dreams was strong and capable and almost frighteningly fearless. She was a warrior, protective of her family and darkly passionate in her work. I wanted to be that girl, I realized. I was tired of feeling like I was split down the center, two very different people converging in one body, looking through two different lives.

            I wanted to be someone who made a difference.

            I wanted to kill some evil sons of bitches, and I wanted to raise a little hell.

            We came to a stop at the fork where the road diverged down two roads; towards the reservation and through Forks to the Cullen’s property. It was raining and the temperature had dropped several degrees, leaving me shivering from the long, wet ride.

            “I have to go to the Cullens,” I said and felt a pit grow in my stomach, “Watch your ass out there tonight Jake. Remember, she already knows. And… and check in on my dad. Please. I can’t risk going home tonight. But please.”

            Jake stood his bike and crossed the distance between it and me. He wrapped both arms around my shoulders and I dropped my forehead onto his massive chest, “Nobody else is going to die, Issy,” he said, “I promise. We’ll stop this.”

            We stood like that for several long minutes before I pushed him back, “Get going. Watch your ass, Teen Wolf.”

            I kicked the stand on my bike and my brother watched me go.

 

            I got absolutely soaked as I tore up the slick highway towards the Cullen house. The rain was like piercing ice that shattered across my exposed neck in the gap between my helmet and Jake’s borrowed jacket. My teeth chattered as I rode, but I never slowed down, never stopped, just ripped through the freezing wind across rain-slick roads until I was inside the Cullen’s garage.

            Motorcycles were impractical for Washington.

            I wasn’t surprised to find Alice there, perched delicately on the hood of her Porsche, stroking the yellow gloss finish lovingly. “I never even got the chance to drive it,” she sighed

            “Sorry,” I mumbled, pulling off my helmet and unzipping my jacket.

            Alice smiled, “You look like you could use a hot shower.” She sprang to her feet and took a step towards me before she stopped dead in her tracked, her eyes darkening and her whole body going rigid. “I smell blood.”

            I stripped off Jakes jacket and laid it over the bike’s seat, “it’s not my blood.”

            “No, she agreed, “it’s vampire blood. Bella, what _happened_?”

            I shook my head, “Alice, I swear, I’ll tell you everything. But not now. I need to talk to all of you, and more than that, I need a shower.”

            She wasn’t okay with this. She wanted to argue. I couldn’t blame her, but I also couldn’t talk about it. Not yet, anyway. Not until I had them all together and could make them listen. Could make them understand that they had a responsibility to this. That is was their problem

            And I needed to solve the mystery of my dreams, because I was sure now, they weren’t just dreams. I was changing and so was Jake. It was only a matter of time before whatever wall was crumbling inside of me would come down completely. And when that happened, I had to be ready.

            When that happened, I had to know who I was going to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a song of the same name by Def Leppard.  
> 


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